
BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD. 

Plwlo : IV. & D. Downey. 



LORD BEACONSFIELD 
AND OTHER TORY MEMORIES 



LORD 
BEACONSFIELD 

AND OTHER TORY MEMORIES 



T. E.^KEBBEL 



WITH REMBRANDT PORTRAIT OF LORD BEACONSFIELD 



NEW YORK 

MITCHELL KENNERLEY 

MCMVII 



r\ L> 



PREFACE. 

In offering these "Memories" to the pubhc I wish 
it to be understood that, be their value what it may, 
they depend for it exclusively on my own personal 
experiences, and are in no wise indebted to either books 
or hearsay. In the second place, it should be stated 
that, besides some passages introduced from my own 
writings and acknowledged in their proper place, others 
may not improbably be found scattered up and down 
the pages of our periodical literature with which I have 
been long connected, though at this distance of time 
I should not know where to look for them. If any such 
do exist, they would, I am quite sure, form but a very 
small proportion of the whole volume, and would, 
equally with the rest of it, be drawn entirely from my 
own personal recollections. 

I am, of course, referring only to those chapters which 
follow the sketches of Lord Beaconsfield, as these are 
republished directly, though not without alteration 
and re-arrangement, from the columns of the Standard. 

I have not thought it necessary to restrict the book 

entirely to anecdote, narrative, or description. Such 

observations as the matter in hand seemed naturally 

to suggest are sometimes introduced, but at long 

intervals and in few words. 

T. E. Kebbel. 

London, March, 1907. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. PAGE. 

LORD BEACONSFIELD. 
Disraeli the Leader of a Reconstructed Party — My First Sight 
of Him — The Publication of " Coningsby " and " Sybil " — ■ 
My Introduction to Disraeli — His Remarks on Bolingbroke r 

CHAPTER II. 
LORD BEACONSFIELD (continued). 
Disraeli's Views on Lord Derby's Refusal to Form a Government — 
As Reformer — A Blue-book Mystery — Lord Palmerston's 
Second Administration — Disraeli's Appreciation of Pluck — 
In Isolation — Literary Admirations — As Journalist — His 
Estimate of Contemporary Biography — Attitude Towards the 
Church of England . . . . . . . -13 

CHAPTER III. 

LORD BEACONSFIELD (continued). 

A Visit to Hughenden — Disraeli's Love of Trees — A Walk with Mrs. 

Disraeli — A Drive with Disraeli — His Views on the Origin of 

the Civil War — After-dinner Talk — A Sally which Made one of 

the Guests Look Grave ....... 30 

CHAPTER IV. 
LORD BEACONSFIELD (continued). 
Disraeli's Views on Parliamentary Reform in General — The Reform 
BUI of 1867 Carried — Mr. Gladstone's Strategy in 1868 — 
Disraeli's Inadequate Grasp of Church Questions — His Admira- 
tion of the Whigs — His Reticence on Questions Affecting the 
Court — His View of " the Rupert of Debate " — Lady 
Beaconsfield's Death ........ 38 

CHAPTER V. 
LORD BEACONSFIELD (continued). 
"Waking Up" (1871) — Opposition to the Ballot — His Vigilance 
in the House — His Refusal to Take Of&ce with a Minority 



viii CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

(1873) — His Second Government — The Public Worship Regula- 
tion Act — On Personal Government — In the Lords — " Peace 
■with Honour " — Why he Did Not Dissolve in 1878 — His 
Eastern Policy — Illness and Death ..... 46 

CHAPTER VI. 
LORD BEACONSFIELD (condiided). 

His Kindness to Friends — Mr. Montagu Corry — Lord Beaconsfield's 
Efforts to Serve the Author — Not a Dandy in his Later Years 
— His Popularity with the Farmers and the Peasantry— A 
Defence of his Sincerity — His Relations with the Author . 59 

CHAPTER VII. 
SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN. 

The Late Duke of Rutland — Belvoir Castle and the Squirearchy — 
A Survival of Eighteenth Century Toryism — " Young England " 
— A Visit to Belvoir Castle — In the Belvoir Kennels — The 
Duchess's Stories of the Imperial Court — The Late Lord Car- 
narvon : A Day at Highclere . . . . . .71 

CHAPTER VIII. 
SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN (concluded). 

The Late Lord Salisbury — Sir Stafford Northcote (Lord Iddesleigh) 
— Lord Derby (the Fourteenth Earl) — The Late Lord Beau- 
champ — Lord Onslow — Some Canvassing Experiences — Mr. 
Brodrick — Lord Balfour of Burleigh — Lord Randolph Churchill 
— Cecil Raikes and his Estimate of Lord Beaconsfield — Lord 
Brabourne — Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff — Mr. Arthur Balfour. 86 

CHAPTER IX. 
TORY MEMBERS I HAVE KNOWN. 

Baron Dimsdale — Origin of the Title — The Baron as a Party Man — 
A Stolid Audience — Convivial Electioneering — Lord Glamis 
and the Memory of William III. — An Elegant Metaphor — 
Baron Dimsdale and his Tenants — Mr. Albert Pell — A Retort 
upon Lord Curzon — Pell's Views on the Poor Law — Sewell Read 
— Sir George Baden-Powell — The Education Bill of 1902 — Mr. 
Balfour's Frankness . . . . . . . .104 



CONTENTS. ix 

CHAPTER X. 

THE CAVE. PAGE 

Lord Palmerston's Domestic Policy — Formation of the Cave — ■ 
How the Whigs were " Dished " — Lord Grosvenor's Amend- 
ment — The Day and its Brief Career ..... 121 

CHAPTER XI. 
TORY LADIES. 
The Era of the PoUtical Hostess — Lady GranvUIe and the Rising 
Liberal Journalist — Lady Jeune's Receptions — Sir John Gorst 
and Lord Beacons field's Funeral- — Sir Richard Webster — An 
Eminent Counsel on County Government — Reminiscences of 
Prince Charles Edward — Lady Ridley — A Sympathiser with 
Lord Iddesleigh — Lady Carnarvon — Lady Stanhope — Lady 
Salisbury — Lady Winifred Herbert — Mrs. St. John Brodrick 132 

CHAPTER XII. 
TORY ARCADIA. 

The Halfords— Wistow— Sir Robert Peel's Frigidity— The Old Duke 
of Cambridge — His Dialogue with a Curate — Likened to the 
Hippopotamus — A Question of Clerical Etiquette — Sir Henry 
Halford, the Physician — Could the Duke of York have Pre- 
vented the Revolution of 1828-32 ? — The Second Sir Henry 
Halford — ^The Last of the Chanticleers — His Love for the 
Classics — The Family Becomes Extinct — The New Poor Law 
— A Hunt Breakfast at Quorn — Boys and Port Wine — ^The 
Economics of County Influence — Parsons in Arcadia — 
Eccentrics .......... 149 

CHAPTER XIII. 
TORY BOHEMIA. 
Journalism in the Mid-century — War Between Tory and Liberal 
Journalists— James Hannay and G. A. Sala — The Idler — The 
Retort upon "S. and B." — The Company at the "Cock" and 
the " Cheese " — Edgar and His Love of Genealogy — Evans's — • 
The Last Stage in Hannay's Career — Mortimer Collins — His 
Eccentricities — His Love of Nature — Charming a Thrush- 
Edward \\'hitty— A Bohemian who was Found Reading the 
Commination Service — Antinomies of Character — Johnny 
Baker .......... 171 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XIV. 
TORY CLUBS. page 

The Tumbler and its Leading Spirits — The Rambler — Installation 
at Dick's — Witty Irish Members — Jack Ormsby — His Narrow 
Escape from Drowning — His Liking for Practical Jokes — Toryism 
and Scholarship — Gowan Evans — Sotheby — Trevor : A Loud 
Snorer — His Cynicism — George Danvers and the Sub-editorial 
Nose — Henry Fawcett — Twenty Years Afterwards— The 
Canning Club — ^The Cecil — The Junior Carlton and St. Stephen's 193 

CHAPTER XV. 
TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 
The Press — ^The Seeleys, Father and Son — The New Quarterly — A 
Subsidy from the Porte — Musurus Pasha— The Pall Mall Gazette 
Founded — Mr. Frederick Greenwood — The County Government 
Bill— The Pall Mall Staff— A Wink from an Archdeacon— The 
Yorkshire Post : A Start Under Difficulties — Joining the 
Staff of the Standard — Writing Leaders by Snatches — System 
of Paynient — Invited to Join the Times Staff — Mr. Mudford — 
Mr. Curtis — The Standard Changes Hands — Contributions to 
the Quarterly Review— Its Editors — Founding of the National 
Review — Articles in the Fortnightly and in the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury — Sir James Knowles — Praser's and Blackwood's — 
Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice and Junius — Mr. Sidney Low 
and Mr. Jeyes — Mr. William Blackwood . . . .216 

CHAPTER XVI. 

TORY DEMOCRACY. 

Lord Randolph Churchill's Definition of Tory Democracy — What 

Lord Beaconsfield Meant by It — Toryism in the Eighteenth 

Century — Peasantry and Gentry — Tory Proclivities of the 

Artisan Class — ^The Peasantry and " Methodies" . . 254 

CHAPTER XVII. 

TORY SPORTSMEN. 

The Late Lord Stanley of Alderley — A Mahometan Supporter 

of the Church of England — Coot-Shooting at Alderley — 

George Baden-Powell — Southey's Small Band of Admirers — 

A Writing Contest with Lord Stanley — Trespassers — Lord 



CONTENTS. xi 

^ . PAGE 

Stanley's Eccentricities — Solitary Shoots — Wind and Ram — 
A Shooting Bishop — The Editor of the Edinburgh Review 
— ^The Dowager Lady Stanley — Her Treatment of a Fellow- 
Passenger — More About Shooting — A Murderous Ass — Three 
Welsh Parsons — At a Welsh Manor House— -A Welsh Dissenter 
and His Little Superstitions — Colonel Talbot — A Reminiscence 
of the Fourteenth Earl of Derby — Lord Stanley of Alderley's 
Mastiffs — A Tenants' Ball — Morris Dancing — Making Converts 
— A Compliment from Lord Strathnairn . . . .261 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
TORY AGRICULTURISTS. 
Where the Allotment System Originated^Difierence Between Allot- 
ments and Small Holdings — -The " Tatur Field " — Advantages 
of a Large System of Peasant Farming — A Call to Landowners 
for Combined Action — A Co-operative Farm Forty Years Ago — 
The Tenant Farmer, Old Style 288 

CHAPTER XIX. 
OXFORD TORYISM. 
Distinct Types of Toryism at Oxford — Sewell — Dr. Marsham — 
Mucklestone — Mitchell — Dr. Routh — Tommy Short — Dr. 
Symonds — Plumptre and Punch — Dr. Pusey — His Toryism — - 
An Apparition — Newman — Lost Causes and False Quantities — 
Mansel — Mark Pattison — Halford Vaughan — Brocket of St. 
Dunstan's .......... 299 

CHAPTER XX. 
TORY INNS. 
Rival Inns — ^Tory Inns on the Road to London — A Tory Tavern- 
keeper's Horror of Mechanics' Institutes — Tory Shops 
and Whig Shops — A Candid Tory Fishmonger — The Engine- 
driver and the Statesman . . . . . . -313 

CHAPTER XXI. 
OUR VILLAGE. 
The Village Described — ^The Vicar — Farmer Dryman — John Ashcot 
the Yeoman — The Village Blacksmith — Farmer Wright — A 



xii CONTENTS. 

True Blue — The Feast — Christmas Celebrations — The Parish 
Clerk — An Antinomian Dissenter — A Versatile Constable — 
Village Termagants — The Scythe and the Flail— A Happy 
and Contented Population — The Clothing Club — Old Poor 
Law and the New ........ 319 

CHAPTER XXII. 
RETROSPECT. 
Childhood and Old Age — Effect on the Tory Party of the Reform 
Act of 1832 — Of the Oxford Revival — Of the Young England 
Movement— Protection — The Present Economic Reaction — 
The Future — Present Position of the Church of England — 
Decline of the House of Commons — A Last Word . . 342 



LORD BEACONSFIELD 

AND OTHER 

TORY MEMORIES. 

CHAPTER I. 

LORD BEACONSFIELD. 

Disraeli the Leader of a Reconstructed Party — My First Sight of Him 
— The PubUcation of " Coningsby " and " Sybil " — My Introduc- 
tion to Disraeli — His Remarks on Bolingbroke. 

The first time I saw Lord Beaconsfield was a few years 
after I had left Oxford and had relinquished all thoughts 
of following my fortunes at the Bar, to which I had 
been originally destined. On leaving the University 
I took chambers in the Temple, and hoped for two or 
three years that I might be able to pursue the path 
chalked out for me. But family circumstances soon 
made it evident to me that I must find some more 
immediate means of supporting myself without further 
assistance from my relations. 

At that time journalism had not become the common 
resort of gentlemen in want of an income, and unwilling 
or unable to wait for the tardy returns to be expected 
from the regular professions. The estimation in which 
it was held in those days is described with perfect 
truth by Trollope in his novel of " He Knew He Was 
Right." The public in general, and country people 
in particular, had the haziest conception of the 
machinery by which newspapers were produced. That 



2 TORY MEMORIES. 

the higher class papers afforded regular and remu- 
nerative employment to a limited number of educated 
gentlemen was what few country parsons or squires 
who did not mix much in London Society or in 
literary circles understood or believed. And it was 
not all at once that journalism occurred to me in the 
light of a possible career and a short cut to indepen- 
dence. I had, however, ventured to send one or two 
short pieces to the Press newspaper, then recently 
established as the organ of the Tory Opposition; and 
I remember that while I was sitting at breakfast in our 
country parsonage at home one morning in 1855, 
dismally meditating on the dreary prospect which con- 
fronted me, the postman brought me a letter which 
decided my fate. It was from Mr. Coulton, the Editor of 
the Press, which at that time was said by Mr. Gladstone 
to be " admirably written," offering me a place on the 
paper, which I at once accepted ; and as Mr. DisraeU (for 
so must we continue to call Lord Beaconsfield throughout 
the greater part of these reminiscences) was in frequent 
communication with Mr. Coulton, it was not long before 
I came m contact with the great man himself. 

Mr. Disraeli at that time was firmly established 
as the Leader of the Conservative Party in the House 
of Commons. He had gained their confidence by the 
skill with which he had re-formed their broken ranks, 
had reclaimed to their colours numerous waverers or 
deserters, and finally had formed a Government which 
the public in general allowed to have played its part 
with dignity and efficiency. He always looked back 
on this stage of his career with great satisfaction. He 
often told me of the pains which he had taken to 
reconstruct the party and the success which had re- 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 3 

warded them. The Conservative Ministry of 1852 
showed how well he had performed his task. Out of 
the broken and dispirited remnants which accepted his 
leadership in 1848 he had built up a powerful Opposition, 
had drawn from its ranks men capable of filling with 
credit the highest offices in the State, and had shown 
the world that there was again a Conservative Party 
qualified both by numbers and ability to take the 
reins of government whenever the Liberals should drop 
them. To the younger generation of Tories he pre- 
sented just that combination of originality, courage 
and wit which was a welcome change after the Par- 
liamentary respectability which followed the death 
of Mr. Canning. They asked for nothing better. 
After the great tergiversation of 1846 and the coalition 
of contradictories in 1853, men had ceased to inquire 
too curiously about principles. 

The personal recollections to which my articles 
in the Standard were as closely as possible confined 
will here be extended to all such reminiscences as 
are in any way connected with the name and fame 
of the Tory leader, showing how his influence per- 
meated all ranks of society, and how wide and how 
deep was the impression created, apart from all 
political considerations, by his unique personality. I 
remember my first sight of him well ; and, though but 
momentary, it printed itself on my mind in more vivid 
and lasting colours than any subsequent interviews 
of much longer duration. At that time, when Parlia- 
ment was sitting, it was the custom of Mr. Coulton 
every Friday night to go down to the House of Com- 
mons as late as could conveniently be managed, return- 
ing to the ofiice in the Strand with a bundle of pencil 



4 TORY MEMORIES. 

notes dictated by Mr. Disraeli, to be moulded into 
the first leader for next day's paper. He more often 
than not brought back with him some terse and neatly 
turned sentences, or some epigrammatic sarcasm, which 
savoured of the master hand. Coulton was a capital 
writer, but he had not that particular gift. " Lord 
Aberdeen's Peace Government against its will drifted 
into war, and Lord Palmerston's War Government 
against its will drifted into peace," was a sentence 
which exactly hit off the situation in the winter of 
1856. It was Disraeli's object, in this epigram, to 
show that a Coalition Government could have no 
fixed or definite policy, and must be at the mercy of 
events. 

It was my business at this time to go down to Mr. 
Coulton's house, which is now, I think, 16, Old Queen 
Street, Westminster, every Thursday afternoon, to 
arrange about articles ; and there, for the first time, I 
set eyes upon my future patron. He was coming out 
of Mr. Coulton's house just as I was going in, and I 
remember that Coulton said two or three words to him 
which I did not distinctly catch, but I suppose they 
referred to the newcomer. He threw a careless side- 
glance at myself as he walked out, and I see him before 
my mind's eye now as clearly as I did at that moment. 
He was then in his fifty-second year, and looked younger. 
His lithe, erect figure, clad in the well-known black 
frock-coat, buttoned rather low down, the grey trousers, 
the black or dark green neckerchief, tied vnth a neat 
bow — for he seldom, I think, wore anything else — 
all fixed themselves in my memory, though the features 
which surmounted them might well have absorbed 
my attention to the exclusion of everything else. 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 5 

It was a face, I thought, indicative of great reserve 
power, and bore the cachet which Mr. Thackeray says 
is always visible in great men : " They may be as mean 
on many points as you or I : but they carry their great 
air. They speak of common life more largely and 
generously than common men do. They regard the 
world with a manlier countenance, and see its real 
features more fairly than the timid shufflers who only 
dare look at life through blinkers or to have an opinion 
when there is a crowd to back it." This is so curiously 
applicable to Mr. Disraeli, and so eminently charac- 
teristic of his whole career, that I wonder it has never 
been applied to him. 

It was not till two years afterwards that I was 
actually introduced to Mr. Disraeli, and in the mean- 
time, before referring to the conversations with which 
from time to time he was kind enough to indulge me, 
I must revert to an earlier period and to the work 
which first attracted the attention of the world at 
large, who knew little as yet of his parliamentary 
reputation or of the earlier novels which, with the 
exception perhaps of " Vivian Grey," were almost 
forgotten. 

I remember an elder brother coming down from 
London during my school holidays and astonishing 
us all with the marvellous tale of " Young England." 
" Have you read ' Coningsby ' ? " was, he assured us, 
on everyone's lips. Not to have read " Coningsby " 
was what Count Mirabel in "Henrietta Temple " would 
have called a bitise. People in general, however, did 
not know what to make of it ; and no one described the 
sensation which it created in fashionable circles better 



6 TORY MEMORIES. 

than the author himself. The dandy who had dined 
with the Regent, and was a dandy still, enjoying life 
as much as ever, inquires of his friend Mr. Melton, 
supposed to have been meant for James Macdonal, 
what this new thing was that young Coningsby had 
brought from abroad, and which everybody was going 
to believe in. "A sort of magnetism, or unknown 
tongues," the dandy concluded it must be. On hear- 
ing that it was not that sort of thing at all, but that 
it required a " deuced deal of history," he observed 
that " one must brush up one's Goldsmith." I merely 
quote from so well-known a book to show the absurd 
ideas which " Coningsby " inspired in some quarters. 
Another class felt more aggrieved by the " Venetian 
Constitution." To have all their previous ideas of 
our glorious Constitution in Church and State sud- 
denly upset by a novel ! Who was the upstart who 
thus ventured to tamper with all our most cherished 
traditions ? Out on him ! Young England indeed ! 
and grave men would sometimes mutter the name 
of Rehoboam, and ask how it fared with him when he 
chose to rely on young Israel. 

This was the kind of talk which went on in many 
a country parsonage and manor house ; and such 
prejudices were not mitigated by Henry Sidney's views 
about the peasantry or the praises bestowed upon 
Eustace Lyle, which were thought to savour of Popish 
proclivities, and still further fomented the alarm which 
the Roman Catholic Relief Act had kindled, and which 
the Oxford movement had inflamed. Then, of course, 
all the ridiculous stories with which we have so long 
been familiar were raked up against Disraeli — his 
first parliamentary speech, the green velvet coat, the 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 7 

long ringlets, the laced ruffles. Such was the atmo- 
sphere in which my first impressions of Mr. Disraeli 
were formed. But there was a counter influence at 
work which tended slowly to modify them. By the 
older people this was not so much felt, but by the 
younger generation, who had come under the influence 
of the Oxford revival, it was soon recognised, and 
especially after the publication of " Sybil," that these 
striking pictures represented only one-half of a great 
religious and political movement, of which the other 
half had started from Oriel. I doubt if Mr. Disraeli 
himself ever saw the connection between the two so 
clearly as he might have done. Had he done so, it 
would have saved him from some mistakes which exer- 
cised a mischievous effect on his after life. 

But, at all events, in " Sybil " he had given such 
apparent evidence of his sympathies with Anglicanism, 
and showed so much apparent insight into the real 
history of the Church, that all the younger Tories and 
High Churchmen began to look to him as a champion 
who might in the end do as much for their principles 
as Mr. Gladstone. Young men who had been taught to 
regard Charles I. as a martyr and the Rebellion as a great 
crime, found it hard to reconcile this belief with what 
they were equally required to profess — namely, that 
William III. was a hero, and the Revolution a great 
blessing. They had, however, accepted the current 
theory without much inquiry, though Scott had done 
something to make them suspicious of it ; and when 
Mr. Disraeli cut the Gordian knot by declaring that the 
popular view of 1688 was founded on a total misconcep- 
tion of the national history, they welcomed the dis- 
covery with enthusiasm. 



8 TORY MEMORIES. 

Of course, it was imputed to him that he meant a 
great deal more than this, and that under his denuncia- 
tion of the Venetian Constitution lurked the intention 
of reviving personal government. That such an idea 
ever took practical shape in his mind I do not believe. 
What he told me himself has always led me to suppose 
that his aim was rather to correct what he thought some 
mistaken views of English history than to suggest 
any monarchical revival for present adoption. 
" Coningsby " called popular attention to what had 
really been done by the legislation of 1828, 1829, and 
1832. The old Constitution, whatever its faults or its 
vices, Venetian or Batavian, was something, as Mr. 
Gladstone has somewhere said, in which a man could 
believe as a whole : something which supplied him 
with a real political faith. Mr. Disraeli did not think 
that its place was supplied by the Tamworth Manifesto. 
But that the void might be filled by a revival of the 
old form of monarchy was an idea which never, I 
think, passed out of the realm of imagination into 
the region of reality. 

As I got to know him better I became aware 
how large a part in his political speculations had been 
played by his imagination. It dwelt fondly on the 
spectacle presented by the Tory party under the first 
two Georges, on their struggle with the Whig oligarchy, 
and on the efforts of Tory statesmen to emancipate 
the Crown from their control. That the author of 
" Coningsby " may have amused himself by living in 
an ideal world, and brooding so closely over past con- 
ditions as to fancy himself for the moment in the midst 
of them, is a tenable hypothesis supported by the 
example of Sir Walter Scott. But we may be satis- 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 9 

fied with thinking that the theories of " Coningsby " 
and " Sybil " were put forward rather as a contribu- 
tion to the history of England and an exposure of the 
false impressions which had been handed down by in- 
terested parties, than with any ulterior object or any 
serious intention of reducing them to practice. 

My reason for thinking so is this. After the down- 
fall of the Palmerston Ministry in 1858, the Press 
changed hands, and I ceased to be a pohtical contributor. 
Then I thought I should hke to see Mr. Disraeh, and, 
as this was easily managed, I was invited on a certain 
day to call at Grosvenor Gate — I think on a Sunday. 
He received me very kindly, and, perhaps, with his 
peculiar views on the subject of youth, my age told 
in my favour. I remember being much impressed — 
perhaps, indeed, rather amused — by one little cir- 
cumstance which occurred while I was sitting with him. 
A servant brought him in a card, which he looked at 
attentively for a minute, and then said, " Tell his 
Highness I will be with him very shortly," and then 
turned round to renew the conversation about Boling- 
broke with your humble servant. Without referring 
directly to his estimate of that statesman given in 
" Coningsby," he spoke very highly of him, and ad- 
vised me particularly to read his correspondence. 

I left Grosvenor Gate without any reason to think 
that less was meant by the pohtical speculations which 
had so startled the public when they first appeared than 
I had hitherto — perhaps too readily — supposed. But 
shortly after the above conversation I wrote an article 
on Bolingbroke for Fraser's Magazine, of which Mr. 
Froude was then editor, when, in spite of my reverence 
for the author of " Coningsby," I took occasion to ask 



10 TORY MEMORIES. 

whether, had Lord Bohngbroke continued to take an 
active part in pubhc affairs after the death of Queen 
Anne, he would ever have indulged in such reflections 
as we find in " The Patriot King " and elsewhere. But 
for the policy of proscription initiated by the Whigs in 
1714, Bolingbroke would have taken office under George 
I. " He believed himself," I said, " a second Cicero 
in exile, and gratified his taste by a great deal of fine 
writing to prove that Walpole and his party were re- 
enacting the part of Augustus, who only exercised 
absolutism more readily through the medium of a servile 
Senate. But such language as this was not natural 
to the man. His brain was too strong, his intellect too 
masculine, not at once to have seen through the weak- 
ness of his own position, had he been obliged to look 
it fairly in the face. He must have known well 
enough that no monarchy could be permanent which 
depended upon the character of a single individual. 
His experience of James H. must, we should 
think, have opened his eyes, if they wanted any 
opening." 

On Mr. Disraeli's receipt of a volume that con- 
tained this essay, he wrote me a letter, which will be 
found on another page, expressing warm approval of its 
contents, including the article on Bolingbroke. The 
next time I saw him I asked him in person the same 
question which I had raised in my essay : What did he 
think would have happened had Queen Anne lived till 
Bolingbroke had matured his schemes, and secured 
the ascendency of the Tory Party throughout the 
country. He said that if Bolingbroke had restored 
the Stuarts, and the Stuarts had been reconciled to 
the Church of England, there need have been no such 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. ii 

startling change as some historians have supposed. 
Government would have been carried on much as it 
had been under Anne. Had Bolingbroke, on the other 
hand, succeeded in making terms with " the Elector 
of Hanover, and placing a Tory king upon the throne, 
St. John himself would simply have been another 
Walpole." In that case we should probably have 
avoided two costly wars, some millions of debt, and a 
good deal of Parliamentary corruption. Bolingbroke 
and the Tories would have carried on the administration 
instead of Walpole and the Whigs. 

" Then, sir," I said, " we should still have had 
the Venetian Constitution, and the Sovereign would 
still have been a Doge." " No," he said, " not the 
Venetian Constitution. The country would not have 
been governed by a few great Whig families — the 
Council of Ten, who kept all real power in their 
own hands. The Sovereign, indeed, might stiU have 
been a Doge, but that would have been owing to 
his ignorance of England and English affairs, not to 
the deliberate purpose of the oligarchy." " But," I 
continued, " how would Bolingbroke and the first two 
Georges have agreed about foreign affairs — about Ger- 
many, for instance ? " This, he saw, was a more 
difficult question to answer. But it was important to 
remember that much of Bolingbroke's declamation 
against the German Alhance and the sums which 
it had cost us was written after Sir Robert Walpole 
had been Minister for twenty years, and not before. 
It is fair to conclude that Bolingbroke would have 
found some way of reconciling the King's German pro- 
clivities with English interests, had he been Minister 
from the first. In 1740 he only saw that Walpole 



12 TORY MEMORIES. 

had failed to do so, and that the consequences had 
been disastrous. 

Thus we see that when compelled to take a prac- 
tical view of eighteenth-century politics Disraeli could 
lay aside his ideals, if he ever secretly cherished any, 
and face the situation as it really was. We might 
suppose — and many persons have supposed — from 
the language used in " Coningsby " and " Sybil," 
that when he wrote these novels he really believed 
that England's best hope for the future lay in the 
restoration of the Royal prerogative to the point at 
which William III. left it. I wiU not say but what he 
might have thought as much in the abstract, or even 
that the pre-Revolution monarchy was preferable to 
the one that succeeded it. He certainly seems to have 
agreed with Lord Shelburne that a real monarchy was 
preferable to a " sham " one, as Shelburne always 
styled the monarchy of the first two Georges; but 
that he ever thought the revival of Shelburne's " real 
royalty" was a practical possibility in the middle of 
the nineteenth century, all I ever heard him say 
about the subject forbids me to believe. 



CHAPTER II. 
LORD BEACONSFIELD {continued). 

Disraeli's Views on Lord Derby's Refusal to Form a Government — As 
Reformer— A Blue-book Mystery — Lord Palmerston's Second Ad- 
ministration — Disraeli's Appreciation of Pluck — In Isolation — 
Literary Admirations — As Journalist — His Estimate of Contem- 
porary Biography — Attitude towards the Church of England. 

I HAVE said that my first introduction to Mr. Disraeli 
was in 1858, soon after the formation of Lord Derby's 
second Ministry, when Lord Palmers ton had just been 
defeated on the Conspiracy to Murder Bill. At the same 
time, he talked a good deal about the Coalition and 
about Lord Derby's refusal to take office in 1855. He 
was now in office, it was true ; and that was some- 
thing. But he was still smarting under the disap- 
pointment which he experienced three years before. 
He knew well enough that the opportunity which 
arrived in 1858 was not the opportunity which was lost 
in 1855. He dwelt on this at some length, and on more 
occasions than one. At the earlier date the party re- 
tained the full strength which the General Election of 
1852 had given them. In 1858 it was weakened by the 
loss of at least thirty seats in 1857. He said that Lord 
Derby was an essentially timid man, and, no doubt, 
he had not the daring spirit of his colleague, who, as 
the fifteenth Earl, once told me, would always go 
" double or quits." 

However, it was clear to me that Mr. Disraeli was 



14 TORY MEMORIES. 

much disappointed, and he could not help referring 
to the character of the last Conservative Ministry in 
justification of his chagrin. That Government had 
been overthrown on the question of Free Trade. Had 
not this been made the issue on which the General Elec- 
tion of 1852 was fought, the Conservatives, he thought, 
would have had a majority at the polls. And if it had 
not been thrust prominently forward in the House of 
Commons, the Government would not have been beaten 
on the Budget. But in 1855 the controversy was 
dead and buried. The Liberals had nothing to 
appeal to but their own mismanagement of the war. 
Had Lord Derby taken office, and hsd he met with 
any factious opposition, an appeal to the country 
would infallibly have given him a majority. Every- 
thing was in his favour. 

Mr. Disraeli returned to this view of the subject 
again and again. He had recalled, he said, a great 
many seceders, he had brought back Gladstone, he 
thought, at least half way to his old friends — "the 
half -regained Eurydice," as he said Lord Derby called 
him ; and he evidently believed that, in spite of 
what had occurred on the night of the division (De- 
cember 16, 1852), Gladstone would have joined Lord 
Derby had the latter taken office three years afterwards 
and shown himself strong enough to keep it. It 
appeared to me that this was what he thought. Yet 
it does not tally with his letter to Lord Malmesbury 
of February, 1855, in which he says of Sir James Graham, 
Mr. Gladstone, and Sidney Herbert, who had just 
resigned, " They first refused to join Lord Derby, 
and stopped Palmerston, who was ready to do so, by 
promising to take office under him. They thus pre- 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 15 

vented a strong Government from being formed, and 
having induced Lord Palmerston to accept the Premier- 
ship on the understanding that he would have their 
assistance, they now leave him in the lurch at a moment 
of great difficulty and danger." In the recently pub- 
lished Life of Lord Herbert of Lea we have a full 
and most interesting account of these complicated 
negotiations. 

Then, Mr. Disraeli continued, came the unfortunate 
affair of the Arrow, the Chinese War, and Lord 
Palmerston's appeal to the British hon, which undid 
all his work, and laid once more in ruins the powerful 
political party which he had raised from the dust and 
rehabilitated with so much skill, patience, and confi- 
dence. Now, he said, he had all his work to do over 
again. Fortune, however, was kind to him, and soon 
gave him another chance. 

Lord Palmerston, at the beginning of 1858, had ; 
undertaken to bring in a Parliamentary Reform Bill. 
When he went out of office Mr. Bright took up the 
question and starred the provinces, delivering a series 
of inflammatory harangues in the North of England 
during the autumn of that year, which had the effect 
which they were intended to have, and made it almost 
impossible for the new Government to shelve the 
question. Accordingly, Mr. Disraeli and Lord Derby 
came to the conclusion that they would make an honest 
effort to deal with it, and stand or fall by their success. 
I now began to see a good deal of Mr. Disraeli. He was 
kind enough to think I might be of some use to him ; 
and a monthly periodical was started, which was in- 
tended to support the Government, and deal especially 



i6 TORY MEMORIES. 

with the question of Reform. This being so, Mr. Dis- 
raeli promised to give me full particulars of the Govern- 
ment plan before any inkling of it had leaked out in 
other quarters. 

He was as good as his word. In 1859 ^ went several 
times to Grosvenor Gate, and he dictated to me every 
detail of the Bill of that year, with the reasons assigned 
for it. I can see him now, as he stood with his back to 
the fire and his hands very often on his hips, a favourite 
attitude with him in the House, and laid the whole plan 
before me with the utmost fulness and precision. The 
two leading features were the equalisation of the town 
and county franchise, and the restriction of the borough 
freeholder to a single vote — that is to say, depriving 
him of the right of voting both for town and county 
on the same qualification. There is no occasion to 
discuss these proposals now. It is more important to 
note that both Mr. Disraeli and his chief were con- 
demned by many Conservatives for touching reform at 
all. Leave it alone, they said, and if you are turned 
out on the question it will be all the better for you here- 
after that you have not sacrificed your consistency. 
Mr. Disraeli told me that Lord Derby was just as 
eager to grapple with the question as he was himself. 
We thought it highly impolitic, if not impossible, he 
said, for the Conservative Party to take up a non pos- 
sumus attitude on a great popular question. Had 
they done so, he proceeded, they must have dwindled 
away like the Jacobites or the Non-jurors ; and he 
always insisted strongly on this point, that parlia- 
mentary reform being a constitutional question, the 
Conservatives had as much right to deal with it as 
the Liberals. " I was determined," he said, " to vin- 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 17 

dicate the right of the party to a free hand, and not 
to allow them to be shut up in a cage formed by the 
Whigs and Radicals ; confined within a certain magic 
circle which they were not to step out of at the peril 
of their lives." He was fond of this illustration, and 
he used it more than once. 

Neither the article which I founded on his notes 
nor his own speeches in the House could save a Reform 
Bill which was foredoomed to failure from the first. 
Lord John Russell, who considered that the Tories 
were poaching on his own preserve, succeeded in throw- 
ing out the Bill on the second reading ; and it is 
probable that the Government expected nothing else. 
It had all the effect which probably Lord Derby in- 
tended, and caused the question to be shelved for 
another seven years. Now that their affected zeal for 
reform had restored the Whigs to power, the measure 
of their earnestness was soon taken. After one faint 
attempt to keep up appearances, the subject was 
dropped. Mr. Disraeli summed up his own view of 
the matter in the pithy remark, almost the last he 
spoke to myself upon the subject, " We pricked the 
imposture." 

Parliament was dissolved in April, 1859, and though 
the Conservatives gained a good many seats, they did 
not get a clear majority. When the new Parliament 
met, a vote of want of confidence was moved by Lord 
Hartington, to which Mr. DisraeU replied immediately 
in a speech which Lord Palmerston pronounced a mas- 
terpiece. Had it been possible, Palmerston said, to 
procure a verdict of not guilty for the Government, 

Si Pergama dextra, 
Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent. 



i8 TORY MEMORIES. 

But the case he had in hand was too hopelessly bad 
for the most consummate advocate to establish. 

Lord Palmerston little knew how near he came to 
being a false prophet. The vote of want of confidence 
was carried by a very small majority, only thirteen 
in a House of 633, and would not have been carried at 
all had the papers relating to the Franco-Austrian 
War been laid on the table of the House in time for 
members to read them before the division was taken. 
Mr. Delane believed that in that case the Opposition 
would have failed, and Lord Clarendon and Lord 
Malmesbury knew it. We are not concerned to inquire 
how long the Government could have held their ground 
afterwards had they weathered the first attack. The 
interesting question, and the one that specially con- 
cerns Mr. Disraeli, is why the papers were not produced. 
I ventured to ask Mr. Disraeli a few days afterwards 
what was the reason of it ; why he had not laid these 
papers on the table. I remember he turned upon 
me rather sharply, the only time I ever saw him 
offended at any question I asked him. " Why, how 
could I produce them when they were not printed ? " 
I do not pretend to reconcile this statement with Lord 
Malmesbury's, who says that Mr. Disraeli would not 
allow him to produce the Blue Book. This, if the book 
was producible, seems a strange story. In Lord 
Malmesbury's Diary we find it written that " Clarendon 
and all the Whigs, and our men, say that it would 
have saved us if it had come out." This testimony to 
its value disposes of the ingenious suggestion that Mr. 
Disraeli kept back the papers not because he had not 
read them, but because he had. But it still remains 
to be asked why Lord Derby, who must have been 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 19 

acquainted with the contents of the Blue Book, did 
not insist on its being produced. 

Lord Malmesbury can only say that Lord Derby was 
ill of the gout, and tired of office, and glad of any 
excuse for getting out of it. But he would hardly have 
treated his party and his colleagues so badly as to 
forbid publication of a document which would have 
saved them from defeat, and have fully justified the 
foreign policy for which he himself was, of course, 
responsible, merely because he was himself tired of 
fighting ; that was not his nature. Mr. Disraeli's curt 
reply to myself can offer no solution. Everything 
that Lord Malmesbury says points to the belief that 
the Blue Book was in a sufficiently forward state to 
have been produced much sooner than it was. What 
Mr. Disraeli told me simply negatives this assumption. 
I could see that he was a little angry at being asked 
about it. And, of course, after such a distinct and 
positive assertion I could pursue the subject no further. 
There must, one would think, be some explanation in 
the background. I never heard Mr. Disraeli say 
another word about it. 

The party, however, continued to be much dis- 
satisfied. They were not tired of office, if Lord Derby 
was ; and, besides that, they believed that their leader 
in the House of Commons, whom they had hitherto re- 
garded as a tactician of the first class, had been guilty 
of a great blunder, which, for a time, lowered their 
confidence in him. I think Mr. Disraeli felt this. He 
might have made a few mistakes, but when he reflected 
on what he had done for the party, when he compared 
it as it was in 1849 with what it had become in 1859, 
he might well have expected that worse blunders would 



20 TORY MEMORIES. 

be overlooked. He knew better than the rank and file 
of the party, at all events, what measures had been 
taken to secure the defeat of the Conservatives. He 
would often dwell on the adroitness with which Lord 
Palmerston had turned his defeat on the Orsini case to 
his own great advantage. He seemed to admire him 
for it, as we sometimes admire the boldness and dex- 
terity of some great criminal. He always assured me, 
as I continued to write for the party, though not in 
the Press, that a secret understanding had been arrived 
at between Palmerston and Louis Napoleon at Com- 
piegne, by which the latter undertook so to time the 
outbreak of the war with Austria as just to fall in with 
the General Election in England ; Lord Palmerston well 
knowing what a useful weapon it would place in the 
hands of the Opposition. That the Government had 
failed to prevent war, that they had greatly provoked 
it by their support of Austria, and so forth, were as- 
sertions which told forcibly at the moment against 
Lord Derby. One story is good until another is told. 
Palmerston and his friend in Paris outmanoeuvred 
Lord Derby and Disraeli. The result lay upon the 
surface. But time has long ago done justice to all 
the actors in this now half -forgotten drama. 

In those days Mr. Disraeli would sometimes talk 
over the position of Mr. Gladstone. He never spoke 
of him either then or afterwards with any bitterness. 
In 1858 it is known that he addressed a pressing invita- 
tion to Mr. Gladstone to join Lord Derby's Cabinet. 
The letter, dated May 28th, with Mr. Gladstone's 
answer, is given at full length in Mr. Morley's Life. 
It is obvious from this letter that Mr. Gladstone was 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 21 

still desirous of posing as a Conservative, and it was not, 
I fancy, till he became Leader of the House under Earl 
Russell and aUied himself closely with Mr. John Bright 
that all hope of reunion with him was finally abandoned. 
Mr. Gladstone himself, in spite of occasional skirmishes 
in Parliament, continued to be on friendly terms with 
Disraeli in private life. So, at least, I was told by 
Lady Beaconsfield, who said that after any sharp en- 
counter in the House of Commons Mr. Gladstone would 
frequently come round to Grosvenor Gate just to show 
that he " bore no malice." But, in spite of what I have 
just said, I can scarcely believe that Mr. Disraeli him- 
self had any real belief in the possibility of regaining 
Mr. Gladstone. I do not think any political differ- 
ence would have prevented it. In fact, at that moment 
I doubt if there was any. But Mr. Disraeli took 
intense interest in the " management " of the Conserva- 
tive Party. He often referred to his own success as 
a party leader, and I have known him contrast his 
own reconstruction of the party after 1846 with Peel's 
reconstruction of it after 1832, a comparison which he 
evidently thought much in his own favour. 

Now, if Mr. Gladstone had consented to sit on the 
Treasury bench alongside of Mr. Disraeli, though the 
latter might have been the nominal leader, yet much 
of the authority attaching to that position must 
necessarily have been transferred to his colleague. In 
the Conservative party in 1858 there were still many 
members who had once looked up to Gladstone as the 
great Tory and High Church statesman. They would 
have been apt always to take their cue from him and 
look to him for the word of command. That this would 
have been gall and wormwood to Mr. Disraeh it is need- 



22 TORY MEMORIES. 

less to say ; and that he foresaw the situation is clear 
from a passage in the letter referred to. He was fond 
of talking of the evils of a divided leadership. This 
had been one of his chief topics against the Aberdeen 
Ministry, to which he often referred in his conversa- 
tions with myself, and I am sure he was often thinking 
that the union of himself and Mr. Gladstone in the 
same Cabinet would, mutatis mutandis, have been 
Palmerston and Aberdeen over again. 

After the General Election of 1859 ^^^ the forma- 
tion of Lord Palmerston's second Administration, the 
relations between Mr. Disraeli and his party continued 
to be rather strained. There was also a strong feel- 
ing in favour of not displacing Lord Palmerston, which 
the Opposition could have done at any moment. While 
he was in office Conservatism was supported on both 
sides of the House. Had he been turned out he could 
at once have fraternised with the Radicals. This 
kind of arrangement, however, was not much to Mr. 
Disraeli's taste. He was no laisser-faire politician. 
And I think, from what he said to me on various occa- 
sions, though not in so many words, namely, that 
Tory principles should be represented by Tory states- 
men, he felt that one who had worked so hard for the 
party as he had done himself had a right to expect 
that, when an opportunity offered of rewarding his 
services, it should not be thrown away. Perhaps 
fcnany of his followers, and possibly even Lord Derby, 
might not be disposed to take the same view of the 
question. But it was natural that Mr. Disraeli should 
take it ; and twice, as I shall have occasion to 
point out, he was doomed to disappointment, either 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 23 

through the lukewarmness or indiscretion of leading 
colleagues. 

He sometimes referred to the famous scene in the 
House of Commons when the " favourite bolted " — in 
other words, when Mr. Walpole, frightened by Lord 
Palmerston's threat of resignation, withdrew a resolu- 
tion which was almost certain to have involved the 
defeat of the Government. But he never spoke with 
any bitterness of it. He admired men like Lord John 
Russell, with pluck enough for twenty men, or like 
Lord Lyndhurst, who could have organised a coup 
d'etat. He was fond of talking about " great men and 
great times " without any express reference to his 
contemporaries, but rather to indulge his humour. I 
have heard him speak highly of Atterbury, and his 
offer to proclaim James HL in his lawn sleeves. This 
was the kind of daring, the nothing-venture-nothing- 
have principle, which appealed to him most strongly ; 
and I dare say he may on one or two occasions 
have repeated to himself Atterbury's well-known ex- 
clamation, " Here is the finest cause in Europe lost for 
want of spirit." 

After the above fiasco Disraeli was for a time, per- 
haps, rather isolated from the bulk of his party. He 
sat on the front Opposition bench with the same im- 
perturbable countenance which he always wore, rarely 
speaking to anyone, and apparently indifferent to any 
taunts which might be thrown at him from the other 
side. Yet I have been told — I think it was by Mr. 
Oliphant — that this indifference was more apparent 
than real ; and that when he was really stung, his 
countenance darkened and assumed a swarthy hue, 
which betrayed his real feelings. Mr. Oliphant sat 



24 TORY MEMORIES. 

opposite to him in the House of Commons, and had 
every opportunity of watching him. But I never 
heard this from anybody else, and I do not ask my 
readers to beheve it imphcitly. Lord Malmesbury 
says that the speech on Walpole's withdrawal was 
" furious," and gave great offence to the party. I can 
scarcely credit that. There is nothing in the speech 
which deserves such an epithet, though the speaker did 
not affect to disguise his disappointment and vexation. 

About this time I often had conversations with him 
on general subjects. He admired the Augustan litera- 
ture more than, I think, the Victorian. He admired 
in literature what he shone in himself — epigram, irony, 
the lofty sneer, the cool sarcasm, the rapier-like retort. 

It is said that those members of the Tory party 
who after 1859 were most dissatisfied with his 
leadership were deterred from any attempt to super- 
sede him by the consciousness of what they would 
have to expect, if he took a seat below the gang- 
way. Of literary style he would probably have taken 
the " Patriot King " for a model. Of Pope he 
was a warm admirer, and the author of " The 
Dunciad " was one of the few English poets whom 
he ever quoted. Talking of Scott, he said he thought 
" Redgauntlet " was one of his finest creations, if not 
the very finest. Of contemporary writers I do not 
recollect hearing him say much. He asked me if I did 
not think that both Dickens and Thackeray had written 
themselves out, and as the question was asked just after 
the publication of " Lovel the Widower " and " Denis 
Duval," while Dickens had come down to " Great 
Expectations " and " Our Mutual Friend," I had no 
difficulty in giving an affirmative answer. 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 25 

He often praised the old Morning Chronicle, as it 
was edited by Black and Perry, as, with one exception, 
our best newspaper style. The exception was Cobbett, 
whom he thoroughly appreciated. He thought him 
superior to Junius, superior to Fonblanque, and superior 
to the best articles in the newly-started Saturday Review. 
Indeed, he availed himself very largely of Cobbett's 
" History of the Protestant Reformation," and in 
" Sybil " he puts into Walter Gerard's mouth 
Cobbett's very words and arguments. But it was, of 
course, of the Political Register that Mr. Disraeh was 
thinking when he spoke of Cobbett as the first jour- 
nalist of the century, and it would certainly be difficult 
to name anything superior to the article which ap- 
peared in the Register of July 30th, 1803, entitled, 
" Important Considerations for the People of the 
Kingdom," pointing out to them the certain conse- 
quences of a French invasion. Of Mr. Disraeli's own 
talents as a leading-article writer, I only know of one 
genuine specimen, and that is the first leader in the first 
number of the Press, which came out early in 1853. 
The style is his own. He did not imitate either Boling- 
broke or Cobbett, or any other writer whom he ad- 
mired. 

I have already stated that the Press passed out 
of his hands in 1858. But early in the sixties he was 
beginning to think of founding another paper to supply 
its place. The Conservative Party missed a chance here. 
The Pall Mall Gazette had not yet made its appearance. 
There was a vacant space to be filled, and it might just 
as well have been filled by a Conservative evening paper 
as by a Liberal. Indeed, one very clever writer who 
afterwards served Mr. Greenwood so effectively on 



26 TORY MEMORIES. 

the Pall Mall Gazette had just begun his career as a 
Conservative journalist, and articles which delighted the 
public during the early seventies might just as well 
have come out of a Conservative office. However, by 
that time the Pall Mall Gazette itself was really, if not 
nominally, a Conservative organ, and probably did 
more to write down Mr. Gladstone's first Administra- 
tion than any other journal of the day. 

But to return to Mr. Disraeli. I have said that his 
ideas of journalism seemed rather old-fashioned, and I 
do not think it would ever have occurred to him to found 
a paper like the Pall Mall Gazette or the Saturday Review. 
He often talked to me about it ; proposed that I should 
be the editor, and even asked me what salary I should 
expect. I remember that when I threw out as a feeler 
£500 a year, he corrected me, and said, " Yes, £10 
a week." I mention this because it shows that he was 
thinking of a time when journalists, like actors, reckoned 
their salaries by the week. They may do so, perhaps, 
to some extent still. But in the middle of the last 
century the practice was general, and Mr. Disraeli's 
thoughts evidently reverted to the system which was in 
existence when the Press was founded. However, the 
project was dropped. Many of the Conservative 
leaders had burned their fingers in the Press, and 
declined to make another experiment. And even if 
they had not, and if the plan had been carried out, 
though I should have told Mr. Disraeli just what I have 
said here, I do not suppose for a moment my advice 
would have been taken. 

I remember about this time having a characteristic 
note from him which may be of some interest in this 
age of biography, as our own may well be called. I 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 27 

was asked — I really forget by what publisher — to write 
a short Life of him ; and I wrote to enquire whether 
he would like to give me any particulars. His 
answer was as follows, coupled with some very kind 
expressions of regard for myself which, however un- 
deserved, serve to illustrate the writer's character and 
his loyalty to those who had endeavoured in any 
way to serve him : — 

HUGHENDEN, 

Nov. 25, i860. 
My dear Sir, — I am not an admirer of contemporary biography, 
and I dislike to be the subject of it. When I pass through town, 
which will be in the course of next month, I will, however, see you 
if you wish it. 

I have always been desirous that a gentleman of your talents, 
acquirements, and character should have the opportunity of bring- 
ing them to bear on public opinion in a manner advantageous to the 
country and beneficial to himself. But no occasion has yet offered 
itself to me by which I could satisfactorily accomplish this end. 
You are, however, fortunately yet young, and I hope to see you 
succeed in life. Believe me. 

Very truly yours, 

Disraeli. 

But his dislike of contemporary biography did not 
prevent him from reading and revising any such short 
notices of himself as might appear in periodicals. 

And perhaps this is the best place to introduce 
what I remember personally of his attitude at this 
time towards the Church of England — that is, from 
i860 to 1868. It was during this period that he delivered 
several very eloquent speeches on the Church of England, 
which were afterwards collected and published separately 
under the title of " Church and Queen." The first of 
them was delivered in November, 1861, at the annual 
meeting of the Oxford diocesan societies, and in it we 
find the following allusion to what were known as the 



28 TORY MEMORIES. 

" Palmerstonian Bishops." " I know," said Mr. Dis- 
raeli, " that recent appointments to high places in 
the Church, and other public circumstances, in their 
opinion equally opposed to the spread and spirit of sound 
Church principles, have made some look without any 
enthusiasm on the connection between Church and 
State, and even contemplate without alarm the possible 
disruption of that union. It is impossible to speak of 
those who hold these opinions without respect, and I 
would say even affection, for we all of us to a great 
degree must share in the sentiments of those who 
entertain these opinions, though we may not be able 
to sanction their practical conclusions." 

Some time afterwards, when I wrote in a magazine : 
" The instincts of race are ineradicable, and while 
those simple forms of government which have always 
prevailed in Asia still retain their charm for men of 
Mr. Disraeli's blood, so it is equally intelligible that 
his instincts and traditions and imagination should 
make him respect a great national hierarchy founded 
on great mysteries and storied with a solemn grandeur, 
like its own old abbeys and cathedrals," he sent word 
to me to say how much pleased he was with this ex- 
pression of his views. 

All this is quite consistent with what he said to 
me after the General Election of 1865, when he was 
again greatly disappointed. During the whole of Lord 
Palmerston's Administration he said he had been labour- 
ing assiduously to conciliate the Roman Catholic party, 
who were naturally much displeased with the foreign 
policy of the Government. He had met, he said, with 
considerable success, and he mentioned to me several 
Lancashire families on whose vote and influence he 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 29 

believed he could depend. A careless, thoughtless 
speech of Lord Derby's gave deep offence to the Roman 
Catholics, and shattered all his hopes. Here he did 
speak with considerable warmth, as he sat up in his 
armchair and " showed how fields were won," and, 
alas ! how they were lost. The Parliament of 1865, 
however, was a Palmerstonian Parliament, and con- 
tained a numerous and influential section of so-called 
Liberals who looked with great dislike on the union 
between Gladstone and Bright in Lord Russell's 
Cabinet. 

I should add that though Mr. Disraeli was, in my 
opinion, sometimes at fault as to the historical position 
of the Church of England, his speech at High Wycombe 
in October, 1862, is one of the best accounts of what 
the country gains by a National Church, and of what 
we should lose by disestablishing it, which I have ever 
met with. 



CHAPTER III. 

LORD BEACONSFIELD (continued). 

A Visit to Hughenden — Disraeli's Love of Trees — A Walk with Mrs. 
Disraeli — A Drive with. Disraeli — His Views on the Origin of the 
Civil War — After-dinner Talk — A Sally which made one of the 
Guests look Grave. 

It was early in October, 1864, that I first received an 
invitation to Hughenden. Mr. Disraeh had very kindly 
asked me to come when he had some people staying 
in the house whom he thought I might like to meet ; 
among them, I remember, was the Duchess of Somerset, 
the Queen of Love and Beauty at the Eglinton Tour- 
nament ; but, unfortunately, I could not go on the 
day fixed, and thus just missed meeting her Grace, who 
had left the day before I got there. 

I remember the journey well — I started from Oxford, 
and drove in a dogcart to Thame, where I caught a 
train to High Wycombe. Here I got a fly to take me 
up to Hughenden. The driver was drunk, and 
several times nearly upset me. But it was a pitch 
dark night, and he may not have been so drunk as he 
looked. Mr. Disraeli, when he heard the story, con- 
gratulated me on having had an adventure. I was too 
late for dinner, but that did not signify, as I had prac- 
tically dined at Oxford ; and after I had dressed I was 
shown into the drawing-room, where I found Mrs. 
Disraeli by herself, whom I now saw for the first time. 
We were soon joined by her husband — and you do not 
30 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 31 

see such a couple as they made every day in the week. 
The contrast was striking. It is enough to say that I 
Hked Mrs. Disraeh very much. She was very good- 
natured • had nothing of the fine lady about her ; and 
I daresay frequently astonished those who had much 
of it. Later on I was regaled with sandwiches and 
sherry, Mr. Disraeli assuring me that Hughenden was 
famous for its sandwiches. I do not know how they 
were made, but I remember I thought they were par- 
ticularly good — as good, that is, as it is in the nature 
of a sandwich to be. The only two guests remaining 
in the house when I got there were Mr. Lygon, 
afterwards Lord Beauchamp, and a Buckinghamshire 
country gentleman, whose name I have forgotten, 
but who, like Dandie Dinmont, as described by 
Dominie Sampson, was learned " in that which apper- 
taineth unto flocks and herds," and was possessed of 
a fine herd of Alderneys, which occupied a large share 
of our attention before we went to bed. No smoking- 
room was mentioned, and we retired early. 

When I looked out of my window the next morning 
I saw Mr. Disraeli walking up and down between his 
two friends on the terrace which ran along the front 
of the house, and afforded a pretty view of the little 
valley of the Wye, from which Wycombe takes its name, 
and the woods and hills which encircle it. The other 
side of the house looked out upon the lawn. Mr. Dis- 
raeli's morning costume was a black velvet shooting 
coat — the very same, perhaps, which he wore when he 
made his famous speech at the Oxford Diocesan Con- 
ference, as described by Mr. Froude ; a tall, sugar- 
loafed hat, with, if I remember right, some kind of 
feather attached to it ; and a dark green tie, a colour 



32 TORY MEMORIES. 

to which he was always partial. I joined them on the 
terrace as soon as I could, and then Mr. Disraeh told 
me a great deal about the house and the estate, and the 
Norris family who had formerly possessed it, and was 
interested in hearing that many years ago an uncle of 
my own had once had thoughts of buying it. He for- 
got to add that the Manor of Hughenden belonged to 
the Priory of Kenilworth, and that he himself was 
one of those " gentle proprietors of abbey lands " 
whom he denounced in " Sybil." 

Of course, he knew the whole neighbourhood 
thoroughly, and seemed to take pleasure in talking 
about it. He was fond of Buckinghamshire, its woods 
and waters, for a great love of trees was one of his 
marked characteristics ; and here, perhaps, a highly 
imaginative person fond of far-fetched resemblances 
might be reminded of the political differences between 
Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone, the one a great con- 
servator of trees, the other a great destroyer. Mr. 
Disraeli was proud, too, of the place which Buckingham- 
shire filled in history, and of the continuity of its 
character down to the present time. When asked 
once where were the four thousand Buckinghamshire 
freeholders who followed John Hampden, " Why, 
where you would expect to find them," was the answer, 
" in Buckinghamshire, to be sure." After breakfast, 
he took me into his library, and it was a pleasure to 
see him among his books. He pointed out several 
scarce volumes, touching each of them as he spoke 
with a slender forefinger, indicative both of race and 
of character. He was a scholar, his favourite classics 
being Sophocles and Horace. But he made Uttle parade 
of either his scholarship or his literature ; and his 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 33 

conversation did not often turn on books, either ancient 
or modern. 

On quitting the hbrary, he retired to his own den 
— a small room upstairs, which I was shown on a sub- 
sequent visit to Hughenden after Mr. Disraeli's death — 
and I was left in charge of Mrs. Disraeli, with whom I 
walked round the garden, and was introduced to the 
peacocks, the cedar brought direct from Lebanon, and 
some other plants or trees which came from the 
Far East. Then we set out for a ramble through 
the woods, my hostess being attired in a short skirt, 
with stout gaiters — a costume which has since become 
comparatively common among ladies, but was new to 
me at the time. In the month of October the woods 
are apt to be wet, and, as it was a damp morning, I 
rather envied her. But her conversation would have 
made amends had I got twice as wet as I did. " Namque 
canebat uti." For she told of her first acquaintance 
with " Dizzy," as she always called him ; of the sums 
she had spent on electioneering down to that date — 
I think she said a hundred thousand pounds — and that 
she was well rewarded by the devotion of so brilliant 
a husband. She spoke of his position as a country 
gentleman and his popularity with the farmers and 
peasantry. He was no sportsman, she said, and kept 
neither hunters nor pointers — I believe a pair of car- 
riage horses were the whole of his stud. The tenants 
supplied him with game as he required it, and that 
much-maligned character, the gamekeeper, was never 
seen on the estate. Then she showed me the walks 
which had been cut through the woods, to each of which 
some fanciful name was given. One was Italy ; another, 
I think — but of this I am not sure — was named after 

D 



34 TORY MEMORIES. 

some Spanish province. Then there was " The Lovers' 
Walk," and all, as I understood, were planned by Mrs. 
Disraeli herself, with the approval and sympathy of 
the statesman. She spoke of his favourite flowers 
and favourite trees, his love of birds, and of the garden 
songsters in particular — the thrush, the black-cap, the 
goldfinch, and the whole tribe of warblers. She showed 
me, in fact, a side of his character but httle understood 
by the world in general at that time, though since then 
it has been better appreciated, and, coming fresh from 
the lips of so clever a woman as his wife, it is easy to 
understand the deep impression which it made on me. 
She gave me also anecdotes and illustrations of his 
great good nature, his kindness to unfriended talent, 
his fidelity to his friends and magnanimous contempt 
for his enemies, 

My hostess brought me back to luncheon about the 
usual hour, and after that meal the carriage came round 
to the door, and Mr. Disraeli took his two other guests 
and myself for a drive round the neighbourhood. It is 
full of historic memories, and it is needless to say that 
our host was steeped in them. It was good to be with 
the great satirist of the " Venetians " on this, to him, 
classic ground. It was the home of his childhood, and 
here he imbibed ideas which never afterwards deserted 
him. His father, Isaac Disraeli, was Hving at Braden- 
ham, only a few miles distant, when he was writing his 
life of Charles I., and ransacked the whole district for 
facts or traditions relating to the Rebellion and the 
families concerned in it. But all family papers belong- 
ing to that period, said our host, were destroyed at 
the Restoration. "The conspiracy was hatched in 
these hills," he said, and whatever evidence of it still 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 35 

existed in the bosom of the Chilterns was carefully 
removed when the Stuarts reappeared upon the scene." 
Our drive took us through a beautiful country, through 
the lovely beech woods from which Buckinghamshire 
derives its name, till at last we came to a spot where 
the hills slope down into a little valley, called Velvet 
Lawns, the slope being covered with natural boxwood, 
said to be indigenous to only one other county in England 
besides Buckinghamshire. Velvet Lawns, he said, at 
one time was a favourite place for picnics, and even 
parties came down from London to hold their revels on 
its turf. But they behaved so badly that leave had 
to be withdrawn. I remember staring at Mr. Disraeli, 
and trying to imagine him at a picnic. 

Mr. Disraeli talked a good deal about the Civil 
War, and had evidently persuaded himself that the 
Chiltern Hills were the cradle of an aristocratic con- 
spiracy, intended by the authors to regain for their 
own order the power which they had wielded under 
the Plantagenets. Charles L's mistakes gave them 
the opportunity they wanted. They were the excuse 
for the Rebellion, but not the cause of it. This already 
existed. Such was the general tenour of his conversa- 
tion on this particular subject, to which he had given 
deep and serious attention independently of the informa- 
tion for which he was indebted to his father. It was 
impossible to doubt, as you listened to his voice and 
marked the play of his features, that he was perfectly 
sincere in this belief. We may take different views 
of the policy of the Parliamentary party, and of the 
results of its ultimate victory in 1688, without doubt- 
ing that Mr. Disraeli's theory of its origin came very 
near the truth. This was a memorable afternoon. 



36 TORY MEMORIES. 

and I remember what struck me at the time was that 
Mr. Disraeh, in his sugar-loaf hat and black cloak which 
he wore in the carriage, resembled anything but a 
Cavalier. 

If I remember rightly, we assembled before dinner 
in the library, and when dinner was announced Mr. 
Disraeli led out his wife and left the three of us to 
follow. The dinner, I recollect, was very good. But 
Mr. Disraeli talked very little, leaving the lady of the 
house to lead the conversation. I remember mention 
being made of Harper Twelvetrees, and Mr. Disraeli 
seemed really to take a lively interest in counting up 
the number of names which had been formed from trees. 
I had the honour of making a remark which attracted 
his attention on the subject of portrait galleries. I 
asked him if he had ever noticed, in looking at collec- 
tions of family portraits, how the general type changed 
as you passed from the seventeenth century into the 
eighteenth, the long or oval face predominating in the 
former becoming the rounder and fatter one most 
common in the latter. He said he never had, and 
turned to Mrs. DisraeU to tell her what I had said. 
The change, I thought, was coincident with the change 
from claret and sack to port and punch, together with 
the deeper potations which the Germans made fashion- 
able in England. He seemed to think it might be so ; 
but he pointed out that claret and Burgundy continued 
to be the drink of the higher classes nearly all through 
the century, and in support of the assertion he quoted 
his two favourite heroes, Bolingbroke and Carteret, 
who both drank Burgundy in large quantities. Yet 
George I. and Walpole drank punch together till the 
small hours, and we have all heard of Savage " roaring 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 37 

for hot punch at five o'clock in the morning." Mr. 
Disraeh said that men in those days had less fear of 
mixing their liquors, and that this might be one cause 
at least of the greater amount of drunkenness. 

We did not sit long after dinner. Nor did Mrs. 
Disraeli remain with us long after we returned to the 
drawing-room. When she was gone, Mr. Disraeh sat and 
chatted with us for an hour very pleasantly : told 
some good stories and said some good things — a joke 
upon an inn called the King's Arms (at Berkhamp- 
stead, I think) is the only one that I remember. Mr. 
Disraeh said he did not remember the inn, upon which 
the owner of the Alderneys assured him that he must 
be mistaken. " You must remember the house, sir : 
there was a very handsome barmaid there — monstrous 
fine gal — you must have been in the King's Arms, sir." 
" Perhaps," said Dizzy, " if I had been in her arms I 
might have remembered it." Mr. Lygon looked grave. 
But Mrs. Grundy has now retired from the stage, and I 
think I may repeat the above without giving offence. 



CHAPTER IV. 
LORD BEACONSFIELD {continued). 

Disraeli's Views on Parliamentary Reform in General — -The Reform 
Bill of 1867 Carried — Mr. Gladstone's Strategy in 1868 — Disraeli's 
Inadequate Grasp of Church Questions — His Admiration of 
the Whigs — His Reticence on Questions Afiecting the Court — His 
View of " the Rupert of Debate " — Lady Beaconsfield's Death. 

In 1866 Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli came into office 
for the third time, and now again a great difference 
appeared in the Conservative ranks on the question of 
parhamentary reform. When it became known that 
the Government meant to introduce a Bill, relying on 
the support of the Cave, a new daily paper was started, 
intended as far as possible to represent the views more 
immediately associated with the AduUamites, but largely 
shared by members on both sides of the House. 

Disraeh's ideas on the subject of parliamentary 
reform in general can hardly be gathered either from 
his speeches or his books. Though he was no friend to 
the Venetian Constitution, he was as little a friend to 
democracy ; and, looking at the question as a practical 
statesman, apart from historical speculations, he con- 
sidered that the EngUsh aristocracy had it in their power 
before 1832 to preserve the best parts of the old Consti- 
tution intact. But after 1832, he said, there was no 
stopping. An arbitrary pecuniary franchise could only 
be maintained so long as it was not assailed. Not to 
suggest changes, and to refuse them when they were 

38 



LORD BEACONSFIELD, 39 

demanded, were two totally different things. The 
WhigSj he once said, taught the English people to 
eat of the tree of knowledge, and to know that they 
were naked. The rest followed as a matter of course. 
Successive requests for more clothing in the shape 
of franchises had to be granted with discretion. A 
hungry man must not have too much to eat all at 
once. It must be given by degrees. But he thought 
the Conservative Reform Bill of 1867 had done enough 
for the time. It had satisfied a large section of the 
population. He knew that more would have to be 
done. He said that of course the turn of the peasantry 
would come, almost implying sometimes that it would 
not be in his own time. Others must carry on the work, 
which, perhaps, need never have been begun ; but as 
it had been, it would be necessary to go on. 

Such was the general impression left on my mind by 
the few occasions on which I saw him during his third 
tenure of office. It was now that the Day newspaper 
was started as the organ of the Cave. But it was begun 
with very insufficient capital, and, though I believe it 
served its turn, it did not live through the session. I 
was employed to write the political leaders, and Mr. 
Disraeli was pleased to say, more out of good nature, 
I should think, than conviction, that they had helped 
largely to carry the Bill. I was present at most of 
the more important debates. I heard several of Mr. 
Disraeli's finest speeches ; and I remember one in 
particular which was delivered in reply to an amend- 
ment moved by Mr. Gladstone, abolishing the dis- 
tinction between the compound householder — a very 
prominent personage in those days — and other rate- 
payers. It was the great trial of strength for the 



40 TORY MEMORIES. 

session, and Mr. Disraeli made some of his happiest 
hits in it. His answer to Mr. Lowe, who had accused 
Sir Stafford Northcote of changing his opinions for 
the sake of place, was peculiarly happy. When Mr. 
Beresford Hope, whose Dutch-built figure and queer 
gesticulations many can remember, declaimed against 
an " Asian mystery," Mr. Disraeli, turning towards him. 
with that peculiar expression on his face and that pe- 
culiar turn of voice by which everyone knew that a 
good thing was coming, said that his honourable friend's 
style was ornamental, but required practice, and that, 
as a comment on the " Asian mystery," " the Batavian 
grace with which it was delivered took all the sting 
out of it." 

When the paper was handed to Mr. Whitmore, the 
Conservative Whip, a burst of cheering broke from the 
Conservative ranks. When the numbers were read out — 
for the amendment, 289, against 310 — the hurrahs rose 
again and again, still louder than before, and all the Tory 
country gentlemen rose from their seats and rushed to 
shake hands with the leader who was said to have be- 
trayed them. Many of the younger members pressed 
Mr. Disraeli to return with them and have supper at 
the Carlton ; but, as Lady Beaconsfield told me after- 
wards, with manifest pride and joy, " Dizzy came home 
to me." And she then proceeded to describe the supper : 
" I had got him a raised pie from Fortnum and Mason's, 
and a bottle of champagne, and he ate half the pie and 
drank all the champagne, and then he said, ' Why, 
my dear, you are more like a mistress than a wife.' " 
And I could see that she took it as a very high compli- 
ment indeed. 

Mr. Lowe had been much admired for his use of the 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 41 

Trojan horse in the debates of 1866. But his reference 
to Chsronea in 1867 caused Mr. Disraeh to dub him an 
" inspired schoolboy." This finished him. 

When the Reform Bill was carried, with every 
prospect of a Conservative majority at the next General 
Election, Mr. Gladstone played his trump card in the 
shape of the Irish Church Resolution, which had the 
effect of changing the issue that was set before the 
electors at the dissolution of Parliament. As Mr. 
Disraeli said, the Liberals would never give a Conserva- 
tive Reform Bill fair play. Neither the Bill of 1859 
nor the Bill of 1867 was allowed to appeal to the people 
on its own merits. On each occasion a fresh issue was 
suddenly interposed between the public eye and the 
Reform Act, which prevented the people from giving 
their whole attention to it and recording their votes 
exclusively with regard to it. Had they done so, Mr. 
Gladstone knew well enough that a Ministerial majority 
would have been returned. In the one case the Franco- 
Austrian War, in the other the Irish Church, was used 
to checkmate the enemy. The move was perfectly suc- 
cessful. Mr. Gladstone has been blamed for it, but I 
think unjustly. According to the party game, as played 
during the last sixty years, it was perfectly legitimate. 

Mr. Gladstone's strategy had a two-fold effect. It 
forced his adversary to fight in a much less advan- 
tageous position than he would otherwise have occu- 
pied, and compelled him to seek allies in an antiquated 
party and obsolete shibboleth, with which he had little 
real sympathy, and with which the more cultured sec- 
tion of the Church of England had still less. I always 
thought it very unfortunate that the question on which 
Mr. Disraeli was obliged to appeal to the country was 



42 TORY MEMORIES. 

the Irish Church. It threw him into the arms of the 
Orange party^ led up to his great mistake about the 
PubUc Worship Regulation Bill, and put him out of 
touch with the great body of Tory High Churchmen, 
who were his natural allies. All this Mr. Gladstone, 
no doubt, foresaw. The Church of England, indeed, 
was not Mr. Disraeli's strong point. He had not studied 
its history, and did not understand its claims, though of 
its practical benefits, and of what would result from the 
loss of it, no man, not even Mr. Gladstone, has spoken 
with greater force and clearness. 

Mr. Disraeli deceived himself about the General Elec- 
tion of 1868. His " arms of precision " speech at the Lord 
Mayor's dinner in 1868 showed that he over-estimated 
the strength of the purely Protestant feeling to which he 
had appealed. These two years, 1867-8, had been a great 
strain upon him, and I thought when I saw him at the 
Literary Fund dinner in the last-mentioned year that 
he looked ghastly. Here he lamented his severance 
from the " pellucid streams of literature," which, how- 
ever, he was shortly to have an opportunity of revisiting. 

Both before and after that date I had frequent 
opportunities of conversing with him ; and I can only 
note down in Boswellian fashion a few of the many 
interesting sayings which I then heard. 

Contrary in some respects to what one might have 
expected, he had a great admiration for the Whigs ; 
not for their statesmanship, but for their courage, con- 
sistency, and discipline. He likened them to a solid 
square, on which throughout the eighteenth century the 
Cavaliers charged in vain. He more than once repeated 
Burke's saying — though, by-the-bye, I never could find 
it in Burke — that the Whigs throughout the whole of 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 43 

this long period were not supported by a majority of 
the nation, but held their own by " management " — 
i.e. generalship. I ventured to ask him some questions 
once about the Peehtes and the Court. On this subject 
he was not very communicative ; but he did say, 
what I have since heard from Whig lips of the purest 
blood, that the Whig party feared Prince Albert, and 
thought that if he had lived he might have brought 
on a collision between the Crown and the Parliament. 
" Party government is a necessary evil," he said. " Sir 
Robert Peel was growing tired of it, and if his followers 
had been willing to join in an attempt to supersede it, 
with the result of adding power to the Crown, we 
should have had trouble." Did he think that any form 
or any measure of personal government was possible 
with the reformed Parliament ? " It is more possible," 
he said, " with a popular franchise than with a restricted 
one. Whatever additional power accrued to the Crown 
would be taken from the aristocracy. They had some- 
thing to lose by such a change. The people had 
nothing." These were the diplomatic answers he was 
in the habit of giving to questions of this nature. He 
would always avoid giving a direct answer — without 
seeming to evade the question. 

I remember once venturing to ask him whether Lord 
Derby's famous reply to the great lady who asked him 
whether one of his newly-appointed colleagues was a 
real man, of which Mr. Saintsbury only quotes half, 
was correctly reported. He smiled, and said that 
Lord Derby, " like many other great men, sometimes 
liked a coarse jest." I repeated to him what had been 
told me by a near relation of Lord Derby, namely, that 
he was rather a vain man than a proud one. " He was 



44 TORY MEMORIES. 

both," was the reply, " but not in poKtics. His vanity 
was not flattered by his becoming Prime Minister. He 
was essentially a timid man." " How did this agree," 
I said, " with his being the Rupert of debate ? " " Oh," 
he said, " rashness and timidity are closely allied." 
But he did not think that the comparison of Lord 
Derby to Rupert was a very happy one. What was 
called rashness in Lord Derby was often simply careless- 
ness. As an instance of real rashness, he quoted the 
Duke of Wellington's well-known dictum about reform. 
That was an uncalled-for attack upon the enemy's 
position, entangling him in difficulties from which he 
could never entirely extricate himself. 

I did not generally find him willing to talk about 
his own books — I regarded them rather as forbidden 
ground. But I did venture to say something to him 
about Count Mirabel, in " Henrietta Temple," and 
Lucian Gay in " Coningsby," the one supposed to be a 
portrait of Count d'Orsay, the other of Theodore Hook. 
I asked him if he had not intended to make more of 
Lucian Gay, as the story went on, when he first began. 
He said, " Wasn't I satisfied with the sheep's 
tails ? " * Thus I got no direct answer, but I always 
thought that he really did drop Lucian Gay on purpose, 
through the difficulty of keeping him going at high pres- 
sure through three volumes. He said he thought 
d'Orsay would be satisfied with his portrait if he saw 
it. The above are some specimens of his mode of 
parrying questions which he was either unable or un- 
willing to answer. It was between 1858 and 1873 that 
I saw the most of him, and most of what is here recorded 
refers to this period, the fifteen years preceding his 

* See " Coningsby," Chapter XI. 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 45 

advent^to real power^ during the larger part of which he 
was necessarily at greater leisure. 

In the year 1872 occurred the death of Lady 
Beaconsfield, and that it was a heavy blow to her 
husband, nobody who knew them both and had seen 
them much together could entertain a doubt. Disraeli 
had his moments of weariness and despondency, which, 
if his wife ever experienced, she carefully concealed. One 
might almost say of her what Cicero says of his daughter. 
While she was alive, wrote the Roman statesman, " he 
always had in all his troubles " quo confugerem, uhi con- 
guiescerem ; cujus in sermone et suavitate omnes cur as dolo- 
resque deponerem." When we read the dedication to 
"Sybil" one could almost beheve that the above words 
had suggested it. "I would inscribe this work to one 
whose noble spirit and gentle nature ever prompt her to 
sympathise with the suffering ; to one whose sweet voice 
has often encouraged, and whose taste and judgment have 
ever guided its pages ; the most severe of critics, but — a 
perfect wife ! " And when he spoke of the days following 
her death as "the darkest hour of his existence " he cer- 
tainly felt what he said. She was always cheerful, always 
brave, and always devoted. And that she did not hve 
to see him attain the goal of his ambition was a melan- 
choly reflection in which he must often have indulged. 

There was a little joke between them which I heard 
from the late Dean of SaHsbury. " You know I mar- 
ried you for your money," Disraeli would say to her. 
" Oh, yes ; but if you were to marry me again you'd 
marry me for love, wouldn't you ? " was the regular 
reply. " Oh, yes ! " her husband would exclaim, and 
the Uttle nuptial comedy ended. 



CHAPTER V. 
LORD BEACONSFIELD (continued). 

"Waking Up" {1871) — Opposition to the Ballot — His Vigilance in 
the House — His Refusal to take Oifice with a Minority (1873)— 
His Second Government — The Public Worship Regulation Act — 
On Personal Government — In the Lords — " Peace with Honour " 
— Why he did not Dissolve in 1878 — His Eastern Policy — Illness 
and Death. 

During the Parliamentary debates on the Irish Church 
and the Irish Land Bill Disraeli was comparatively quiet. 
But when, in February, 1871, Lord Hartington moved 
that a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into 
the state of West Meath and certain adjoining parts of 
Meath and King's County, the nature, extent, and 
effect of a certain unlawful combination and confederacy 
existing therein, and the best means of suppressing the 
same, he sprang to his feet with all his usual alacrity 
and delivered a very telling speech. I was not a re- 
porter, but I was in the Gallery at the time, and the 
word went round that he was " waking up." On the 
24th, on the Black Sea Conference, he rose to his full 
height, and it was felt that " Dizzy " was a man again. 
This was a remarkably able speech, and the manner 
in which he replied to Mr. Gladstone's frequent inter- 
ruptions irritated the Prime Minister not a little. 
When Mr. Gladstone had to rebuke an opponent he 
was usually solemn and severe, " bursting with moral 
indignation," and so forth ; Disraeli, with his 

46 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 47 

hands on his hips, and replying with calm incredulity 
and ironical civility to whatever contradictions or 
explanations his adversary might interpose, was a 
wonderful contrast. 

In this speech, too, occurred his memorable descrip- 
tion of all that we had done for Ireland at the instance 
of Mr. Gladstone. " Under his influence we have 
legahsed confiscation, consecrated sacrilege, condoned 
high treason : we have destroyed churches, and we have 
emptied gaols." Mr. Froude, who quotes this as an 
admirable specimen of his sarcastic style, says that 
" the drawling iteration " with which each particular 
count of the indictment was uttered produced a marvel- 
lous effect. I heard the speech, and I should not have 
described it in that way. The orator made a slight 
pause between each article, which greatly heightened 
its effect. But there was no drawl. Each assertion 
was delivered with low-toned emphasis — slowly, and 
with that air of amazement which he knew so well how 
to assume. But every word was pronounced with special 
distinctness, and each point was allowed time to produce 
its full effect before he proceeded to the next. 

It was during this first Administration of Mr. Glad- 
stone that the question of the ballot was seriously taken 
up by the Government, who at first proposed that it 
should be optional ; and Sir William Harcourt was the 
first to point out the absurdity of the suggestion, since 
an optional ballot would afford no secrecy whatever. 
Mr. Disraeli was always opposed to it. " I hate the 
baUot," he was heard to say in private more than once, 
as I was informed by Lord Rowton. But the " extinct 
volcanoes " were doomed. Neither the ballot nor the 
promised repeal of the income-tax could save Mr. 



48 TORY MEMORIES. 

Gladstone from defeat. Several unfortunate incidents 
had contributed to swell the bill of indictment against 
the Ministry. One which Mr. Disraeli took the greatest 
advantage of was the affair of Sir Spencer Robinson, 
Controller of the Navy, who, when he appHed to Mr. 
Gladstone for leave to publish a correspondence between 
himself and Mr. Childers relating to the loss of the 
Captain, was told that he might do so provided he would 
change the dates. This was too good a point for Mr. 
Disraeli to pass over. " I have heard many remark- 
able things," he said, " this session, which promises 
to be rife with interest. ... I have heard also this 
session — and I look upon it as one of the most remark- 
able things of which I have any recollection — that a 
functionary who sought to publish a correspondence 
connected with his department, which he not only 
believed to be necessary to vindicate his character, 
but to be of the greatest interest to the country, 
received permission to do so, provided he changed the 
dates." 

The tone and manner in which he pronounced these 
last five words baffle description. I can never forget 
it. Lowering his voice a little, and uttering them very 
slowly, bending forward slightly at the same time 
and looking down the House, as was his wont on 
such occasions, he brought out the full force of the 
innuendo with galling gravity. Mr. Gladstone, of course, 
had an answer. But what it was I do not know. He 
only said, in reply to Mr. DisraeU, that the accusation 
was " paltry and contemptible," and there, so far as I 
know, the matter dropped in Parliament. With the 
outside public, however, Mr. Disraeli's sarcasm had a 
considerable effect, for the general public did not under- 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 49 

stand Mr. Gladstone's strange request ; nor does Mr. 
Morley offer any explanation. 

Mr. Disraeli was a formidable antagonist in the 
House of Commons for very many reasons, one among 
which was his keen vigilance. Nothing escaped him, 
and in the great debate on the Irish University Educa- 
tion Bill, in 1873, this quality served him in good stead, 
and enabled him to wind up the debate with a speech 
which turned the scale against the Government. Mr. 
Cardwell had said on a previous night that the Govern- 
ment were ready to make all concessions that were 
required in a Liberal direction. Many members, how- 
ever, did not happen to hear what fell from Mr. Glad- 
stone afterwards, just as the House was breaking up. 
The Prime Minister said that the statement of the Secre- 
tary for War only meant that the Government would 
be perfectly willing to consider certain questions in 
Committee. Mr. Disraeli's comment on Mr. Glad- 
stone's statement is worth quoting : "I have had 
rather a long experience of this House. I have seen 
many important measures brought forward by both sides 
of the House ; I have heard many objections to those 
measures. I have heard Ministers promise, and very 
properly promise, in vindicating the second reading of 
their Bill, that if the House would only go into Committee 
all those obj ections should be fairly discussed. But I have 
generally seen that when they have gone into Committee 
not one of these objections has been carried." I did 
not hear the speech myself. But Disraeli's quickness in 
catching Mr. Gladstone's words led up to one of the 
turning points in our Parliamentary history, and settled 
the fate of the Bill, which marked the first stage in the 
decline of the old Liberal party. 



50 TORY MEMORIES. 

I did not see much of Mr. Disraeli just about this 
time, but I was in the House when he gave his explana- 
tion of his refusal to take office in March, 1873 ; and 
I have a vivid recollection of his tone and manner as 
he described the situation of a Government taking 
office in a minority. He spoke from bitter personal 
experience. " We should have what is called ' fair 
play.' There would be no wholesale censure, but re- 
tail humiliation." (He was thinking of 1852 and 1867.) 
" In a certain time we should enter into the paradise 
of abstract resolutions. One day honourable gentle- 
men cannot withstand the golden opportunity of asking 
the House to affirm that the income-tax should no longer 
form one of the features of our Ways and Means. Of 
course, a proposition of that kind would be scouted by 
the right honourable gentleman and all of his colleagues ; 
but then they might dine out that day, and the resolu- 
tion might be carried, as resolutions of that kind have 
been. Then another honourable gentleman, distin- 
guished for his knowledge of men and things, would 
move that the Diplomatic Service be abolished. While 
honourable gentlemen opposite were laughing in their 
sleeves at the mover, they would vote for the motion 
in order to put the Government into a minority. For 
this reason : Why should men, they would say, govern 
the country who are in a minority ? And it would go 
very hard if, on some sultry afternoon, some honour- 
able member should not ' rush in where angels fear 
to tread,' and successfully assimilate the borough and 
the county franchise." 

The subject suited him exactly ; and, though I have 
heard Lord Palmerston, Lord Derby, Lord Salisbury, 
Mr. Lowe, Sir William Harcourt, and Mr. Gladstone 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 51 

himself, I have never heard Mr. Disraeli's equal in the 
delivery of a sarcasm. I think Sir W. Har court came 
the nearest to him. But it was longo intervallo. 

The first year of Mr. Disraeli's Administration which 
succeeded Mr. Gladstone's in 1874 was marked by the 
passage of an Act which has made it more famous 
than many more important events. I mean the Public 
Worship Regulation Act, which, he said, rather un- 
happily, was an Act " to put down Ritualism." The 
phrase stuck to him, and did him an infinity of harm. 
But a knowledge of the Church of England was not 
Mr. Disraeli's strong point, as I have already sug- 
gested. He was often at the mercy of the last speaker 
who got his ear. When he led the Young England 
party, he adopted their views of Church questions, and 
took his creed from Lord John Manners and his asso- 
ciates. When he had to defend the Irish Church, he 
took his creed from Lord Cairns. Thus he was thrown 
into the arms of the Orange party, and lost the 
allegiance of many of the High Church clergy, who were 
in those days nearly all Conservatives. 

Many of his sayings on the same subject showed 
that he did not understand the idiosyncrasy of the 
English clergy as he understood other classes of the 
community. They did not like his way of putting 
things. Speaking of " Essays and Reviews," he said 
that he himself was all for free inquiry, " but by free 
inquirers." This gave offence not only to the Broad 
Church party, but also to many High Church Anghcans. 
Again, his assertion that he " was on the side of the 
angels " was not much to their taste. These expres- 
sions, though they meant nothing more than, perhaps, 
the same men would have said in other words, rather 



52 TORY MEMORIES. 

jarred on the ethos — if I may use the word — of a highly 
cultivated class, always shrinking from epigram on 
sacred subjects. 

After he took office in 1874, Mr. Disraeh had little 
leisure for private conversation. One subject, how- 
ever, which came up at that time he allowed me to 
discuss with him briefly, and that was " personal govern- 
ment." It was Baron Stockmar's " Life of the Prince 
Consort " which first raised the question. It was 
taken up by Mr. Goldwin Smith, who never forgave Mr. 
Disraeli for his portrait of "the Oxford professor" 
in " Lothair," or for being designated afterwards by 
the same eminent humorist as " the wild man of the 
cloister," and it was made the subject of an article in 
the Nineteenth Century by Mr. Dunckley, who had 
already written to the same effect in a provincial 
journal. 

I replied to this article, in the same magazine, a 
reply which drew from the Spectator an admission that 
the House of Commons was losing ground in public 
estimation every day, and that the country " might 
seek in a form of personal power a new source of strength 
and vigorous control of its affairs." Lord Beacons- 
field was charged with attempting to set up this " per- 
sonal power," and with instigating Queen Victoria to 
join in the conspiracy. The charge was actually 
repeated by one of his colleagues, who was, however, 
not at that time a member of the Government. Speak- 
ing of Lord Beaconsfield's relations with the Queen, 
he said, " He tells her that she can govern like Queen 
Elizabeth, and she wants no teaching." 

I have already quoted what Lord Beaconsfield 
said about the greater possibility of a revival of 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 53 

prerogative under a democratic regime than under 
an aristocratic one. But he also gave me more of 
his views on the subject for the purpose of my article 
in the Nineteenth. Mr. Dunckley had said, " If the 
Queen can summon 7,000 Sepoys to Malta, she might 
land 70,000 at Southampton and destroy our liberties." 
" The Constitution," said Lord Beaconsfield, " works 
through a series of understandings, and depends entirely 
on the moderation and good sense of all parties con- 
cerned in it. This," he begged me to observe, " is 
just the guarantee we have that the Crown will not 
bring 70,000 Sepoys to Southampton. We have no 
other security that it may not equally abuse all its 
other great powers. Mr. Dunckley's argument," he 
concluded by saying, "is as good in principle against 
any standing army at all as it is against their particular 
employment in our Indian standing army." I asked 
him what he supposed to be meant by the Sovereign 
standing altogether aloof from party, and whether, 
in giving his confidence to the Ministers who at any 
given moment may enjoy the confidence of Parliament, 
he was to have no political opinion of his own, or to 
change them at least as often as he changed his Ministers. 
He answered : if that is the meaning of the Sovereign's 
neutrality, it would, " to save him from being a political 
partisan, make him a political infidel." 

Aristotle's three democratic characteristics are 
ayeveia, irevia, ^avavaia (Pol. vi. 2). Whether the sinking 
process in Parhament which Mr. Gladstone, Mr. 
Disraeh, and some of the best thinkers of the day 
believed to be visible thirty years ago has made any 
further progress under the influence of these three 
characteristics I leave to others to determine. Mr. 



54 TORY MEMORIES. 

Disraeli certainly thought that if it went much further 
a great change would be impending, and that a stronger 
monarchy would at least be preferable to a Republican 
dictatorship. 

With the development of the Eastern Question 
and Mr. Disraeli's translation to the House of Lords 
came a marked change in the man. He held his own 
among the Peers with great dignity, and one or two of 
his best speeches were delivered in the Upper House. 
But the House of Commons was " his natural born 
element " — it was there that he had his foot upon his 
native heath : and the Lord Beaconsfield of the House 
of Lords was necessarily a different personage from 
the people's " Dizzy," one whom they loved and ad- 
mired none the less because they did not understand 
him, and never quite knew what to make of him. 

I remember well, when he was still Prime Minister, 
his reply to a question asked by Lord Granville relative 
to some occurrence which had attracted public atten- 
tion. Lord Beaconsfield gave the necessary explana- 
tion, and then added, in the gravest manner : "So 
your lordships will see that there is not one word of 
truth in the statement which the noble Earl as the Leader 
of the Opposition in your Lordships' House has very 
properly made." Lord Granville sat opposite to him, 
smihng with congenial amusement at all which the 
tone and manner, the glance and the attitude, of his 
antagonist implied. I remember, too, in the debate 
of March 4th, 1881, on the evacuation of Kandahar, 
how Lord Beaconsfield looked over his shoulder at the 
cross benches where Lord Derby, who had defended 
the evacuation, then sat, saying : " My noble friend 
made a very animated speech — and I do not know that 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 55 

there is anything which would excite his enthusiasm 
except when he contemplates the surrender of some 
national possession," and the " faint, well-bred merri- 
ment," to borrow his own words from " Coningsby," 
which moved the calm countenances of that aristocratic 
assembly as they recognised the truth of the satire. I 
heard the short speech which he made on unveiling the 
statue of Lord Derby at Westminster. Among the 
company present to witness the ceremony were Mr. 
R. H. Hutton, Professor Huxley, and Bishop EUicott. 
I had the honour of forming one of their group, and, 
though all three — certainly the two first-named — were 
very far from being " Dizzyites," they all showed their 
lively appreciation of one whose genius alone had borne 
him to the summit of affairs, and whose wit, humour, 
and courage had made him a popular favourite, in spite 
of the numerous disadvantages with which he had had 
to struggle. 

When he brought back " Peace with Honour " from 
Berlin it was not altogether the kind of peace which 
he would have striven for had he been able to have 
his own way from the first on the Eastern Question. He 
would have played a more forward game against Russia 
had his hands been free. " My colleagues wouldn't 
let me," he said one day, as he sat rather moodily over 
the fire. But, nevertheless, July i6th, 1878, was a 
great day in his life. I witnessed his reception at 
Charing Cross, and joined in the cheers which greeted 
him as he drove out of the station. He looked in high 
health and spirits, and at that moment was probably 
the most popular and powerful man in her Majesty's 
dominions. If he had dissolved Parhament at that 
time, quum de Teutonico vellet descender e curru, he would 



56 TORY MEMORIES. 

■•certainly have died Prime Minister. And I never 
could learn why he didn't. I had no opportunity of 
asking him. But it was said the Government were 
afraid of an appeal to the people because of some tem- 
porary irritation resulting from their financial policy. 
I can't think that Lord Beaconsfield himself would have 
been deterred by any such consideration. But the 
Government had been alarmed by the Buckingham- 
shire election in 1876, when a safe Conservative seat 
had only been retained by the small majority of 186. 
Had Lord Beaconsfield been ten years younger, he 
might perhaps have acted differently. But for the 
moment, on that July day, now nearly thirty years ago, 
he stood on a pinnacle of greatness which may perhaps 
have affected even his cool and sagacious judgment. 

It is a mistake, by the way, to suppose that his 
support of the Turks was due to his Oriental pro- 
clivities. His sympathies were all with the Arabs, 
between whom and the Turks there was no affinity of 
either race or tradition, of art or literature. 

Mr. Froude says that when Lord Beaconsfield re- 
turned from Berlin he thought " he had secured the 
ascendency of the Conservative party for at least a 
quarter of a century." If he thought so then he did 
not think so long. When, in the autumn of 1879, a 
friend who was about to leave England spoke of seeing 
him in Downing Street again that time next year, he 
said, " I think it very doubtful whether we shall be here 
this time next year." 

Since 1878 the tide of his popularity, which was then 
at flood, had been slowly ebbing ; and though he may 
not have looked forward to defeat as a certainty, he 
evidently regarded it as a contingency to be reckoned 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 57 

with. Whether even for his own sake he deeply re- 
gretted it is, perhaps, doubtful. His health was broken. 
He had lived his life. He might say with Dido — 

Vixi et quern dederit cursum Fortuna peregi. 

His portrait has been unconsciously painted by the 
great poet of the Victorian age in colours that will 
never fade. He is an example, if ever there was one, 
of the man — 

Who makes by force his merit known, 
And lives to clutch the golden keys, 
To mould a mighty State's decrees, 

And shape the whisper of the Throne. 

Some time during the winter of 1880-81 I met him at 
a reception given at the house of a well-known Tory 
hostess. He was not looking ill then. He inquired 
about my work. I told him of some articles I had 
been writing for the Nineteenth Century, one on the 
cause of the Conservative defeat, which he said he had 
read, and agreed with as to the borough constituencies, 
and also as to the English aristocracy, whom I had 
likened to the " country gentleman of Palestine " who 
confided in his wealth and great possessions, and was 
doomed to such a sudden blow. He said he had noted 
the comparison, which amused him, and which he 
thought a fair one, adding only that it was not so appro- 
priate in a period of agricultural depression as it might 
have been in more prosperous times. 

This was the last time I ever saw him. Towards the 
end of March he caught cold, which brought on an attack 
of bronchitis, and he never left the house again. Down 
to the middle of April hopes were entertained of his 
recovery. But in the third week a sudden change 



58 TORY MEMORIES. 

took place in the weather. The 17th, Easter Sunday, 
was bitterly cold, with a keen east wind, and the effect 
on Lord Beaconsfield was immediate. On the following 
Tuesday, the 19th, I was returning to town from a 
visit in the Eastern counties. The ground was covered 
with snow. The air was damp and foggy, and when a 
friend who got into the same carriage told us of his 
death it was only what I had expected. The dismal 
atmosphere accorded better with one's feelings than a 
sunny spring day would have done. His death was a 
great grief to myself, to whom he had shown a measure 
of kindness wholly out of proportion to any service I 
had rendered him, and it was in his mind before his 
death to do me a still greater honour, for I was told by 
Lord Rowton shortly afterwards that Lord Beaconsfield 
intended his life to be written by Lord Barrington 
and myself. But as no instructions to that effect 
were found among his papers, the matter went no 
further. 



CHAPTER VI. 

LORD BEACONSFIELD (concluded). 

His Kindness to Friends — Mr. Montagu Corry — Lord Beaconsfield's 
EfEorts to serve the Autlior — Not a Dandy in his Later Years — 
His Popularity with the Farmers and the Peasantry — A Defence of 
his Sincerity — His Relations with the Author. 

Lord Beaconsfield was very loyal to all his supporters, 
down to the humblest, and he had a real sympathy 
with journalism which forty years ago was not uni- 
versal among statesmen. When he found that the 
best or the only way of rewarding Mr. Montagu Corry 
was by giving him a peerage, there was a difficulty 
about the insufficiency of Mr. Corry's means to support 
the dignity. Objections to the grant of a peerage 
where this insufficiency existed were known to be enter- 
tained in the highest quarter ; and there seemed to be 
only one way of conquering them. The letter written 
by Lord Beaconsfield to a relation of Mr. Corry, in whose 
power it was to remove this impediment, was described 
to me by Sir Philip Rose as one that would " wile the 
bird off the bough." It had the desired effect ; and 
the writer's object was immediately secured. Of his 
friends in the Press he was equally mindful. Mr. 
Coulton, the editor of the Press, of whom I have already 
spoken, would have been rewarded with a lucrative 
post had he lived. Unfortunately his death occurred 
a year before his patron returned to power. Another 
editor of the same paper, though not of the same calibre, 

59 



6o TORY MEMORIES. 

received a smaller reward. A sub-editor was made 
Inspector of Factories, and the same official rank was 
offered to myself. But as it would have taken me away 
from London, and interrupted the work which had 
now become the business of my life, I declined it, with, 
I think, Mr. Disraeli's approval. I was very much 
interested in political journalism, and having ready 
access to the Conservative leader, I did not wish to 
break off the connection. 

Another gentleman there was on whose behalf I 
once spoke to Mr. Disraeli, and received from him the 
following very interesting and characteristic reply — 

Aug. i8, 1873. 

Dear Mr. Kebbel, — My acquaintance with Mr. was slight, 

limited I believe to one personal interview. But I endeavoured 
to assist him in life, and sometimes not without success. When 
I acceded to office in 1857 [a slip of the pen for 1858] he borrowed 
of me a not inconsiderable sum, but I never heard from him again, 
even when at my instance he obtained from Lord Derby the office 
to which you allude. I do not over appreciate gratitude, nor am 
I inclined to be at all exacting in such matters, still you will allow 
me to say that under all the circumstances of the case I think I have 
done for Mr. as much as he deserves. 

Mr. Disraeli, as I may continue to call him, 
was always willing to assist me. I have already 
spoken of the Reform Bill of 1859, and the early 
information of its details which I received from 
him. In the following year I wrote an article on him 
and his career down to that date, of which he corrected 
the proofs, enriching it at the same time with marginal 
notes of the greatest interest in his own handwriting, 
which, it is needless to say, I have carefully preserved. 
One of these relates to events which have not always 
been correctly recorded. " The leadership of the House 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 6i 

of Commons was never offered to Mr. Gladstone, though 
Mr. DisraeU would have been willing to yield it to him 
in 1850-1. It was offered at Mr. Disraeli's instigation 
to Lord Palmerston on two occasions." 

I had an interview with Mr. Disraeli before writing 
the article, and when he saw the proof he did me the 
honour to say that it was " clear and spirited." But 
he said more than this ; and, at the risk of being charged 
with vanity and egotism, I have ventured to publish 

the following letters : — 

Grosvenor Gate, 

May 2, i860. 
My dear Sir, — I have read your article with much satisfaction. 
Generally speaking it shows a knowledge of politics which is not 
usual, and is, therefore, calculated to influence opinion. 

Personally speaking, I feel indebted to you for a generous and, 
I trust, not altogether unjust survey of a difficult career, and I shall 
not easily forget your effort. 

When this article was republished four years after- 
wards with some others in a volume styled, " Essays 
on History and Pohtics," Mr. Disraeli wrote to me again, 
and again I must apologise for this and further exhibi- 
tions of vanity : — 

Grosvenor Gate, 

July II, 1864. 

My dear Sir, — I have just written to Lord Beaucharap, who is 
an invalid and wanted an agreeable companion in his travels to 
Brighton and about, to take with him your " Essays." I am de- 
lighted with them, and I think they will establish your reputation as 
a sound critic and a graceful writer. 

I had other letters from him of an equally flattering 
character, but I have quoted enough to show the ready 
kindness and encouragement with which he greeted the 
early literary efforts of a young man just entering life, 
without interest or connections, and with little to com- 



62 TORY MEMORIES. 

mend him to the notice of a great statesman except 
admiration of his genius. What further small services I 
was able to render him when the Reform Bill of 1867 was 
on the table have been amply repaid, and to those I have 
already referred. But I must give one more letter to 
show not only the sincerity of his friendship, but the 
warmth of his sympathy when appealed to on a subject 
which nearly concerned my own future happiness. 

At this time, of course, the details of the coming 
Reform Bill, and Cabinet discussions on the subject, 
were absorbing his attention, and wearing him with 
daily anxieties. Yet amidst all this press of affairs he 
found time to write to me as follows, fully showing that 
what he said in his letter of i860 was not empty 

words — Downing Street, 

Feh. 15, 1867. 

Dear Mr. Kebbel, — I have been, and am, so continuously en- 
gaged that it has been quite out of my power to reply to your letter, 
and I would not address you on such a subject by the hand of another- 

The moment I acceded to office, I mentioned your name to two 
of my colleagues, who, I thought, would have the power and oppor- 
tunity of forwarding your views, and expressed the strongest feeling 
on my part that they should be advanced and gratified. 

I make no doubt that they will take the earliest occasion to forward 
my wishes. But, unhappily, I learn from Mr. Corry that my assump- 
tion, the foundation of all my efforts, that you could accept pro- 
fessional office and employment, is not warranted, and that I must 
consider your case as that of one without a profession. 

This throws immense difficulties in my way, not to say insur- 
mountable ones— for there is scarcely an office which does not require 
a professional qualification, but I will watch and do my best for you.* 

I have given your book to read to Mr. Corry, and you may com- 
municate with him, either personally or by letter, without reserve. 
He is almost as anxious to serve you as ... . 

One of the colleagues to whom he spoke was Lord 
Cairns, and I understood that a county court judgeship 

* This promise was not unfulfilled. — T. E. K. 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 63 

might be mine if it suited me to take [it. But, though 
called to the Bar, I had never practised, never held a 
brief, never even sat in court. My friends urged me to 
accept the offer if it came, and made light of my objec- 
tion. However, I felt myself wholly unfit for the posi- 
tion, and I believe I was right in not running the risk 
which would certainly have attended the acceptance of 
it. All this is nothing to the public, except in so far 
as it explains Lord Beaconsfield's letter. I should add 
here that when he spoke to Lord Cairns he did not know 
that I had never practised at the Bar. 

Lord Beaconsfield had once been a dandy, and had 
lived with the dandies ; and how completely he 
had caught the tone of them may be seen from 
" Coningsby." But as he advanced on the political 
stage he left his dandyism behind him. His dress was 
always in the best taste — black frock coat, grey trousers, 
and well-fitting shoes on his well-shaped feet. His gar- 
ments never looked either old or new. And as he 
walked up the House of Commons with his coat but- 
toned he looked, men would sometimes say, as if pleased 
that he had " kept his waist." He stooped a little in his 
later days, but otherwise he had a very neat figure. 
I have said that he was not a dandy. But there was 
one thing about which he was very particular, and that 
was his wig- When any Conservative member in pass- 
ing to his seat on the bench just above the front one 
disturbed the arrangement of his leader's " back hair," 
there was always a little impatient gesture and a hand 
hastily raised and passed round to the nape of the neck 
to repair the disorder if there were any. 

His fondness for trees, flowers, and birds I have 
already touched upon. Besides his favourite primrose. 



64 TORY MEMORIES. 

he loved violets, gardenias, and orchids ; and after 
his death I was shown at Hughenden the spot 
where stood his favourite ash tree, blown down in a 
gale during one of those stormy winters which 
occurred in succession about eight-and-twenty years 
ago. He grieved over its loss, for, independently of 
his love for this particular tree, he did not like to 
see anything destroyed. He could not bear to look 
upon a dead bird. When I visited Hughenden in the 
autumn of 1881, in company with Lord Rowton, I was 
shown all his favourite walks in the woods and by the 
brook, and I thought he must often, remembering who 
had once been his companion in all of them, have re- 
peated to himself the lines of Mrs. Hemans, " And by 
the brook and in the glade Are all our wanderings o'er ? " 
Even in the London parks he could discover bits of 
sylvan scenery. His own room, in which he did most of 
his writing, was, if I remember right, a rather low-roofed, 
oblong room looking out upon the garden ; and here he 
used to work, sometimes on of&cial papers brought down 
to him from London, sometimes on a novel, till four 
o'clock, when he always went out for his walk or drive 
before dinner. What a multitude of memories and 
associations thronged upon one's mind while sitting in 
the chair or leaning on the table which had once been 
his ! Everything about the house was much as he had 
left it, with the exception that the peacocks were no 
longer there. The Queen herself had taken charge of 
them. 

Though not a typical English country gentleman, 
for he neither hunted, nor shot, nor even tried to 
throw a fly upon the trout stream which he loved, 
he was naturally very popular with both the 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 65 

farmers and the peasantry. He liked to look in at the 
cottages and talk to the village matrons at their tea- 
time ; and he has remarked with what perfect good 
breeding a peasant's wife would receive you. She 
was never uncertain of her position^ an uncertainty, 
which, he said, was the main cause of awkwardness in 
Society. This was one of his sayings which I have 
treasured up. He loved the country and its beech 
woods, as I have said. He revelled in a warm, bright 
sun, and once told me he never wondered at the sun- 
worshippers. But his heart, after all, was in London, 
in among the throngs of men, or drinking delight of 
battle with his peers. Hcb tihi erunt artes. 

A well-known Conservative member and a steady 
supporter of Mr. Disraeli once said to me that he 
doubted his sincerity at bottom — not his loyalty or 
fidelity to the party which he led : he never swerved in 
his allegiance, and devoted all his great powers with- 
out stint to the service of those " to whom he had Sv^ld 

his sword." I remember Mr. li. saying this to me 

as we were walking away one Sunday afternoon from a 
house where we had both been calling, and where 
Disraeli had been one of the subjects of conversation. 
No one, said my friend, could question his honesty or 
his honour as between himself and his party. But did 
he really beheve in Conservatism ? Or had he not chosen 
his party simply because it afforded the readiest road 
towards the goal of his ambition ? 

This estimate of the Conservative leader was not 
peculiar to my friend. But those who entertained it 
could not have studied either his character or his writings 
very deeply. He was an aristocrat of aristocrats. He 
had no notion of allowing political power to be divorced 



66 TORY MEMORIES. 

from the principle of birth and property. He always 
spoke of the country gentlemen of England as the 
natural leaders of the rural population. Both in his 
speeches and in his writings he loved to dwell on the 
advantages of what he called " a territorial constitu- 
tion." And perhaps he did not always make sufficient 
allowance for the inroads which had been made in it 
during the fifty years that followed the first Reform Bill. 
Such, at least, is the impression which his language on 
the subject has left upon my own mind. His sarcasms 
at the expense of the English aristocracy were limited 
to a very small section of them, though often mistaken 
for contempt of aristocracy in general. There could not 
be a greater error. He believed himself to possess a 
pedigree compared with which the pedigrees of the 
oldest families in Christendom were as things of yester- 
day. 

As for forms of government, his ancestors had lived 
under a theocracy not very like government by Tra- 
falgar Square. The very charges brought against him 
of a leaning to personal government, and a desire to 
exalt the prerogative, all point in the same direction. 
Whether he had sold his sword to the Conservatives 
or not, he could never have sold it to the Destructives. 
If he had been really a Radical there was every open- 
ing for him after the Reform Bill. This is too often 
forgotten. But I must not be led into a long disserta- 
tion on Mr. Disraeli's pohtical principles, as I am con- 
cerned now rather with my own recollections of him. 
If I have dwelt too long upon them, or said too much 
about myself, my excuse must be the pardonable pride 
and pleasure with which I look back on the intimacy 
which he allowed and encouraged, and the fact that I 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 67 

won my own way to his esteem without either influence 
or introductions. 

In the biographies, memoirs, and magazine articles 
which have been written about him during the last 
quarter of a century I have seen very little as far 
as concerns actual personal intercourse with the great 
statesman which may not be found in my own Life of 
him, written very shortly after his death ; or in my edition 
of his speeches published by Messrs. Longmans in 1882, 
which has been drawn upon by other writers, not 
always with any acknowledgment of the debt. I have 
endeavoured in these "Memories" to confine myself as 
much as possible to what I saw and heard with my 
own eyes and ears during the five-and-twenty years over 
which my acquaintance with him extended. But for 
some things I am indebted to members of the House of 
Commons, and for one or two to the late Duchess of 
Rutland, whose Memoir of his later years was pub- 
lished soon after his death. In his " Little Life " of 
Lord Beaconsfield Mr. Walter Sichel has mentioned 
circumstances whch have found a place in these re- 
miniscences, but as I had been long acquainted with 
them I did not conceive myself precluded from 
recording them here. 

As Mr. Froude truly says, he had few intimate 
friends. He thinks there were but two — his wife and 
Mrs. Willyams — to whom he was tenderly attached. 
But I think we may add to the list Lord Rowton, who 
certainly had a large share of his affection, and fully 
deserved it. I saw a good deal of Lord Rowton at 
one time ; and besides his genial good humour, and 
friendly sympathies, the simplicity and naturalness of 
his character and his manners were extremely winning. 



68 TORY MEMORIES. 

How well I remember his saying to me when for some 
reason he had asked my age, " Ah, I'm sixty : it's a 
great bore." 

I have said that after Lord Beaconsfield's death 
I visited Hughenden with Lord Rowton, and it was 
to assist him in looking through the papers and letters 
which were left at his discretion. We turned over 
boxful after boxful, but found nothing of sufficient 
interest to warrant our making any selection from them, 
nor did I ever hear from Lord Rowton subsequently 
that he had found any others. But if others existed, 
furnishing new materials, either political or personal, 
they will doubtless be referred to in the more com- 
plete biography of Lord Beaconsfield which is now 
promised us. 

I have not been careful to observe any strict chrono- 
logical order. In " rambling recollections " such as 
these it is not required — even if it would not, to some 
extent, impair their interest. All that I have tried to 
do is to set down as accurately as I could whatever 
passed in the way of personal intercourse between Lord 
Beaconsfield and myself, all that I heard of his speeches 
in Parliament, and whatever I was told by others 
which has not become common property. But it was 
impossible to avoid introducing some passages which 
are already familiar to the public ; while in what has 
been quoted from his speeches in Parliament there are 
necessarily many more which are now household words. 

These reminiscences have been written entirely from 
memory, except the letters of Mr. Disraeli which I 
have quoted ; and I daresay I have omitted some 
things which, had I been writing twenty years ago, I 
might have remembered. But not, I think, many. 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 69 

It was Mr. Disraeli, in reality, who shaped my life, 
and his is the principal figure which passes before 
my eyes as I look back upon it. As he is the only patron 
I ever had, I cannot compare him with others. But I 
suppose the " patron," as handed down to us by the 
eighteenth-century writers, is now extinct, and that no 
struggling man of letters ever finds him " a native of 
the rocks." I have fondly imagined my relations with Mr. 
Disraeli to have resembled in some slight degree Crabbe's 
relations with Burke. Certainly there was something 
in his manner, no less than in his actions, to inspire 
one with affection as well as admiration and gratitude. 
The kindly interest which he took in my affairs might 
almost have been called paternal. And it is impossible 
for me to look back upon him from any such detached 
point of view as might ensure a more impartial estimate. 
Like Johnson, he had " fought his way by his litera- 
ture and his wit " ; nor would all his efforts have availed 
him in the struggle had not his genius shone through the 
clouds of detraction which for a time obscured it ; and 
had not the force of his character and the strength of his 
will compelled all ordinary obstacles to give way before 
him. That the secession of the Peelites, who stood 
sulkily aloof, and the death of Lord George Bentinck 
brought him his opportunity, may be true enough. But 
all men who rise in the world by their own exertions 
must wait for their opportunity, and that they were able 
to seize it when it came is all that can be said of many 
of the world's heroes. The opportunity offered to 
Disraeli was the vacancy in a post which had been 
filled by such men as Wyndham, Pulteney, Fox, 
Peel, and Russell. Disraeli was equal to the occasion, 
and that when he had once gained it he held the 



70 TORY MEMORIES. 

position for thirty years, " ever foremost in the fight, 
face to face with antagonists who were reputed the 
ablest speakers, the most powerful thinkers whom 
the country could produce,"* is the best proof that the 
acceptance of him was no mere temporary make- 
shift, but that in the fearless orator who always singled 
out the tallest foeman for attack, the Tory party and 
the nation at large had found a born leader. 

Power came to him too late in life. When he took 
office in 1874 he was sixty-nine years of age, and more 
disposed to regard Downing Street as a haven of rest 
than as a basis for future and more laborious opera- 
tions. But it is a great mistake to regard his career as 
a failure. To have rebuilt a great political party after 
it had been shattered by the defection of its own leader, 
and to have raised it, in spite of its unpopular ante- 
cedents, to such a height of public favour that of the 
thirty-nine years which followed his great measure the 
Tories were in power with large majorities for twenty- 
three, is a feat which, if he had done nothing else, would 
have entitled his career to be called a great success. 

I conclude these memories of Lord Beaconsfield 
with an extract from a letter written to me by Lord 
Rowton in 1886, which will show, I hope, that I have not 
been guilty of presumption in claiming to possess some 
knowledge of the great statesman's character and 

principles : — 

31, Hill Street, 

Jan. 14, 1886. 
Dear Mr. Kebbel, — . . . . It is now nearly twenty years 
since my dear old friend told me to read something of yours as the 
work of one -who "understood him," as there were not many such 
at that time. Very truly yours, 

Rowton. 



CHAPTER VII. 

SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN. 

The Late Duke of Rutland — Belvoir Castle and the Squirearchy — A 
Survival of Eighteenth-century Toryism — •" Young England " — A 
Visit to the Castle — In the Belvoir Kennels — The Duchess's Stories 
of the Imperial Court — The Late Lord Carnarvon : A Day at 
Highclere. 

The late Duke of Rutland, better known perhaps as 
Lord John Manners, was one of Lord Beaconsfield's 
earliest friends ; and as Belvoir Castle was the head of 
the Tory interest in the county of Leicester, the clergy 
and gentry who dwelt within its borders, being nearly 
all of them Tories, were necessarily much interested 
in all the sayings and doings of the Manners family. I 
remember being taken to Leicester to hear Lord John 
speak at a public meeting when I was quite a child, 
and I marvelled in my own mind how anyone who had 
such a difficulty in expressing himself should venture to 
speak in public at all. I soon, however, got to know 
the reason why ; and Lord John Manners himself, who 
was then a neophyte and evidently highly nervous, 
gradually improved, till he became in time one of the 
most effective debaters in the House of Commons, 
though he was never an orator and made no pretence to 
the higher flights of eloquence. In those days Belvoir 
Castle was kept up in great style, and the county was 
entertained there with liberal hospitality. My father, who 
was Vicar of Wistow, then owned by Sir Henry Halford, 

71 



72 TORY MEMORIES. 

accompanied that famous physician to Bel voir — I 
think about the year 1835, or 1836, when Lord John 
Manners was a youth of seventeen — and he amused us 
all with his account of the manner in which his young 
lordship had shown him over the castle. He had been 
assured beforehand that it would be necessary for him 
to take his manservant with him to wait outside his 
door, as there were no bells in the bedrooms. The man, 
a middle-aged respectable servant of the old stamp, 
who had been with us for years, was not accustomed 
to the ways of great houses, and being out of livery 
was, of course, placed with the upper servants, the 
gentlemen's gentlemen, who drank claret and Bur- 
gundy, beverages not at all to the taste of our un- 
fortunate domestic, who made very wry faces when he 
spoke of it afterwards. 

Notwithstanding the general popularity of the Bel- 
voir family, and the respect with which they were 
regarded as the leaders of the county Society, and the 
heads of a great political connection, there was, I have 
heard, not infrequently some slight degree of friction 
between the " Castle interest," as it was called, and 
the minor gentry or squirearchy of the county. This 
was a survival of the old Toryism of the eighteenth 
century, when the majority of the provincial nobility, 
though stiU calling themselves Tories, were reconciled 
to the Court and offered little opposition to the Govern- 
ment. But " the wealthy country gentlemen of 
England," says Sir Walter Scott, " a rank which re- 
tained with much of ancient manners and primitive 
integrity a great proportion of obstinate and unyielding 
prejudice, stood aloof in haughty and suUen opposition, 
and cast many a look of mingled regret and hope to 



SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN. 73 

Bois le Due, Avignon, and Italy." It is well known 
how tenaciously a sentiment of this kind will hold 
its ground long after the cause which originally gave 
birth to it is forgotten. This was the case in Leicester- 
shire. At least, so I was assured in the middle of the 
last century by an old Tory politician who took an 
active part in county elections, and had a large practice 
as a doctor among the class referred to ; so that he had 
every opportunity of observing such traces of the 
ancient jealousy as stiU lingered among them. This 
moribund tradition which, though all significance had 
departed from it, was still alive in the last generation 
seems to me one of the most interesting old Tory 
memories which I am able to recall. It connects us 
so closely with the past ; with the days when, very 
possibly. Sir Charles Halford, the ancestor of our own 
squire, as he walked among his deer at Wistow, m^ay 
have indulged in the same hopes and regrets as Sir 
Everard at Waverley Honour. 

When I first began to hear people talk about Lord 
John Manners, " Young England " was on everyone's 
tongue, both in political and social circles. Lord John 
himself had entered the House of Commons in 1841, 
being then in his twenty-third year ; and in the fol- 
lowing autumn he joined Mr. Disraeli and the Hon. 
George Smythe in a tour through the manufacturing dis- 
tricts/that they might judge for themselves of the con- 
dition of the factory population, which had some years 
before been brought under the notice of the public by 
Mr. Sadler, the Tory member for Newark, and author 
of the first Factory Bill ever introduced into the House 
of Commons. It was referred to a Select Committee, 
and, says Mr. Spencer Walpole, the evidence taken 



74 TORY MEMORIES. 

before it " revealed a state of misery which even Sadler 
had not disclosed." Sadler had no seat in the 
Reformed Parliament. But the factory question was 
taken up by Lord Ashley, who, though unsuccessful 
himself, made such an impression on Parliament and 
the public that Lord Althorp, the Leader of the House, 
brought in and passed the first Factory Bill which was 
ever placed upon the Statute Book. The younger Tories, 
however, were by no means satisfied that enough had 
been done, and hence the tour of inspection which I have 
just described. 

In " Coningsby," Lord John Manners, as aU the 
world knows, figures as Lord Henry Sidney, and he was 
always regarded, even more than Disraeli himself, as 
embodying in his own person the true ideal of Young 
England. How this was at first ridiculed is a matter 
of history. Lord John's poetry was, of course, made 
fun of. Veteran politicians treated the Young England 
party as so many children. Punch ridiculed their white 
waistcoats. But it would be a great mistake to found 
our estimate of the Young England party on what was 
said of it at the time by critics, either grave or gay, who 
had special reasons for abusing it. 

The Morning Chronicle and the Times both did 
justice to the ability of these young men, and were 
very severe on Sir Robert Peel for attempting to put 
them down with that official hauteur for which he was, 
perhaps, a little too remarkable. Time has shown that 
on some points they were in the right and Sir Robert in 
the wrong, notably on the question of factory legisla- 
tion. It was not, however, with the condition of the 
manufacturing poor that Lord John Manners princip- 
ally concerned himself in Parliament, though always 



SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN. 75 

voting with Lord Ashley. It was in the peasantry of 
England that he took the deepest and most constant 
interest ; and he was always to be found in the front 
when measures for the relief or advancement of the 
agricultural labourer were in hand. In debates on waste 
lands, enclosures, allotments, and the like he always 
took part, and it is interesting to find the names of all 
the chief of the Young England party in the minority 
who supported Mr. Walter's motion for the reform of 
the then Poor Law in 1843 — Cochrane, Disraeli, Lord 
J. Manners, and the Hon. George Smythe. 

At a later period Lord John had his revenge on his 
detractors. When Lord John Russell, in the House 
of Commons, twitted him with his lines about our old 
nobility, he replied, " I would rather have written these 
verses, foolish as they may be, than be the man to re- 
mind me of them now." 

In 1864 I sent a copy of an essay of mine to Lord 
John Manners, and had a very polite note in reply. But 
I did not see much of him till after his accession to the 
dukedom in 1888. I heard him speak several times in 
the House of Commons, and Mr. Leycester, who was 
then the chief of the Times staff in the Gallery, used 
to say, in common with other reporters, that he was the 
last of the debaters, meaning that few men were left 
who could rise in the middle of a long debate, and 
answer the previous speakers point by point without 
digressing into other matters or propounding counter 
theories of their own. 

It was in the year 1888 that, being asked to under- 
take a Life of the poet Crabbe, I wrote to the Duke of 
Rutland, as he had then become, to ask him if any 
traditions relating to the poet were still preserved at 



76 TORY MEMORIES. 

Belvoir, where he had spent some time as chaplain to the 
fourth Duke of Rutland, Pitt's great friend, a man of 
high ability and literary culture, quite capable of con- 
versing with Crabbe on questions of art and poetry. 
Crabbe had afterwards held the living of Muston, a village 
in the neighbourhood, which I was anxious to visit. 
The answer was a kind invitation to come down to 
Belvoir from Friday to Monday and hear whatever 
there was to be told. 

It is needless to say that I accepted the invitation 
at once ; but, being unable to get away on Friday, 
I was obliged to get off as early as I could on 
Saturday morning after a night's work at the office. 
I arrived at the Castle about two o'clock, if I remember 
aright, and was received by the Duchess who, had I 
been able to go down the previous evening, would have 
driven me over to Muston herself that morning, and 
very probably would have been able to tell me many 
things which, as it was, I missed. She was otherwise 
engaged, however, in the afternoon ; and after luncheon 
a groom drove me over to Muston with a note of intro- 
duction to the resident clergyman. Here I picked up 
a great deal of novel and interesting information about 
the poet, which I embodied in my short biography. 
But the Duke himself did not seem to have heard much 
about him. 

On my return to the Castle, it was time to dress 
for dinner. The party consisted, besides the Duke 
and Duchess, of Lord and Lady Granby, Mr. Norman 
(the Castle chaplain), and Lord Cecil and Lord William 
Manners. The two younger sisters, Lady Victoria and 
Lady EHsabeth Manners, I did not see till next morn- 
ing. I remember that I narrowly escaped committing 



SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN. ^^ 

a gross breach of etiquette when dinner was announced. 
But luckily no one observed it. I was standing next 
to Lady Granby, and I don't think we were either of 
us speaking at the moment, when the Duke, who was 
sitting at the other end of the room, came up to us, 
just as dinner was announced, and said to me, " Let 
me introduce you to my daughter-in-law. Lady Granby." 
Now, it had never entered into my head that I could 
be intended to take Lady Granby into dinner ; yet the 
Duke's introduction at that particular moment, when 
a move was being made towards the dining-room, looked 
so much like it, that in another second of time I should 
have offered her ladyship my arm. But the momentary 
hesitation saved me. Before I could perpetrate so 
dreadful a blunder the Duke took Lady Granby himself, 
which, of course, was what he had all along intended. 
Sic me servavit Apollo. For the Duke in his youth 
might have sat for the god. He was eminently hand- 
some, and I knew an old lady, a connection of my 
own, who was fond of reminding us that when a young 
girl of twenty she had once danced with him. 

At breakfast next morning Lord Cecil, I think, com- 
plained that there was nothing hot, and declared that 
he had had no breakfast since he came to Belvoir. The 
Duchess admitted that it was very disgraceful, but 
recommended her son to have some gruel at eleven 
o'clock. As there was an excellent pigeon pie on the 
sideboard, and other cold viands as well, I did not pity 
that young nobleman so deeply as I otherwise might 
have done. 

The interval between chapel and luncheon I spent 
with Lord William, who undertook to show me over the 
Castle just as his father had shown my own father over 



78 TORY MEMORIES. 

it fifty years before. Billy, as he was called in the family, 
was the youngest son — her Benjamin, the Duchess called 
him — and the next morning, when he went back to school 
at WeUington College, I travelled up to town with 
him and Lord Granby, who had been Lord Sahsbury's 
private secretary. Lord Granby contrasted his Chief 
with Gladstone, who would have liked to show 
himself at the window of the carriage and bow to some- 
body at every station where the train stopped. He 
said he never could get Lord Salisbury to show himself 
at all. Even if there was a crowd on the platform ex- 
pecting him, it was with great difficulty that he could be 
persuaded to recognise them. 

In the afternoon. Lord Cecil had asked me if I should 
like to see the kennels, to which I, of course, said yes. 
We went down accordingly, and I soon found myself 
in the middle of a pack of hounds said to be the hand- 
somest in England, v/hose attentions were rather more 
demonstrative than pleasant. When somebody men- 
tioned in Lady Victoria's presence the common belief 
that if the huntsman or whipper-in went into the kennels 
without his red coat the hounds would fiy at him, the 
little lady, then about twelve years old, entered a most 
vigorous protest against the libel on her favourites. 
" No, no," she exclaimed, and when told by her governess, 
I think, that she was a httle too emphatic, she only 
repeated her negation with still greater energy than 
before : " No, no, no, no, no ! " Her young lady- 
ship, I believe, even at this early age was sometimes 
deputed to show visitors over the Castle, and doubt- 
less she was quite equal to the occasion. 

The hounds, however, when I was among them, 
were perfectly good-tempered, though I ran some risk 



SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN. 79 

of being knocked down by their caresses, which is always 
rather a perilous situation ; and when Lord Cecil and 
Mr. Gillard, the huntsman, had gone away and left me 
alone with them, I was not altogether quite so much 
at my ease as I could have wished to be. One hound in 
particular — who, I had been told, was a very savage 
dog — sat upon a stone by himself at a little distance, 
and took no part in the somewhat boisterous welcome 
accorded me by his fellows. However, to have shown 
any signs of uneasiness might have been risky, and I 
continued to pat and talk familiarly to all the animals, 
who approached me as if they were old friends, and 
being a great lover of dogs, I was able to make them 
understand me. But I don't much desire another such 
quarter of an hour. The hunt was kept up at that 
time at its full strength ; there were sixty-two couples 
of hounds and eighty hunters. But there were only 
three gamekeepers for the whole of the large property 
adjoining the Castle, though, as Lord Cecil assured me, 
there was always abundance of game. 

In the evening the Duchess invited myself and some 
others of the party, I forget which, to sit beside her on 
the sofa, while she amused us with an account of her 
visit to Berlin, whither she had gone with the Duke in 
attendance on Queen Victoria in the preceding April. 
She drew some graphic pictures of the etiquette of the 
Imperial Court. Following the royal party into dinner, 
the ladies and gentlemen went in single file, the ladies 
first, and not arm-in-arm. She did not think very 
highly of the Imperial cuisine, and said they were aU 
served with stale fish. The Duke saw a good deal of 
Prince Bismarck, who thought him an excellent re- 
presentative of the English aristocracy. This going 



8o TORY MEMORIES. 

to Berlin occurred almost immediately after the death 
of his brother, whom he succeeded in the title and 
estates. At Belvoir he did not keep up any great 
state or large retinue of servants, and though my stay 
was so short I had time to remark on the same pleasant 
air of the country, the same easy and familiar, and yet 
dignified and graceful, courtesy pervading life at the 
Castle which Disraeli has described in " Coningsby." 

Later on, I often saw the Duke in London both at 
Cumberland Gate and afterwards at Campden Hill. 
It was at Cumberland Gate that I first saw Lady 
Katharine Manners, a very pretty girl, then about 
five-and-twenty. The last time I met her she was 
receiving the guests at a garden party at Campden Hill, 
seated under a large tree, a dainty vision which I still 
love to recall. 

The Duke very kindly assisted me with any poHtical 
information of which I stood in need, and his remarks 
on agricultural questions, on small holdings and allot- 
ments, which his father was the first to introduce into 
Leicestershire, were always valuable. The condition 
of the peasantry, as I have said, had interested him even 
more than that of the factory population. And there 
is no reason to doubt that the views ascribed to Lord 
Henry Sidney in that famous after-dinner conversa- 
tion in " Coningsby " represent very fairly what the 
late Duke really felt upon the same subject. Though 
the family politics down to Mr. Pitt's time had been 
Whig, none knew better than the late Duke that the 
old Tory party and the peasantry had throughout the 
eighteenth century been close alhes. The line between 
tenant farmers and labourers was not so strictly drawn 
as it has been since, and both were generally included 



SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN. 8i 

under the head of peasantry. They were almost univer- 
sally staunch Churchmen, and loyal to their landlords. 
The yeoman class, the small freeholders, were equally 
attached to their old rural and ecclesiastical constitutions. 
And in his sympathies with the whole body, Lord John 
Manners was identifying himself with the best type 
of English Toryism. As a High Churchman, his sym- 
pathies were with Keble and Pusey, and Dr. Routh 
and Jones of Nayland and William Law, rather than 
with the more advanced school, which in time acquired 
the name of Ritualists. In fact, if anyone had wished 
to describe the best type of Tory in George H.'s 
time, he could not have done better than take the 
Duke of Rutland for his model, though the famil}^ 
politics at that date were Whig. A gracious and genial 
gentleman, clinging, as far as possible, to the kindly 
feudal relations between the lords of the soil and the 
cultivators, whom it was their duty and privilege to 
protect ; a generous and disinterested statesman ; a 
man of culture and refinement ; true to the Caroline 
tradition of Anghcanism and to the principles of consti- 
tutional monarchy, he exhibited almost all the notes of 
that great national creed which the Tories held when 
they were at once the leaders of the people, the sup- 
porters of the Crown, and the champions of the 
Church. 

He lived into days which must to him have seemed 
very evil days. Authority, property, liberty, all the 
constituent elements of an orderly and well-balanced 
state, derided, threatened, or abandoned ; the very 
class in whom he had always taken the warmest in- 
terest turning against his own order, and the Ministers 
of the Crown no longer caring to uphold the claims of 

G 



82 TORY MEMORIES. 

that religious faith of which the Sovereign is the sworn 
defender. We may be thankful for his sake that he was 
not spared to see the ruin of the British Empire and the 
descent of this ancient kingdom to a lower rank among 
the nations. Toryism has fought hard in the past, and 
will fight hard in the future to prevent such a catas- 
trophe. The end no man can foresee. But it may 
be that the greatness of England will some day become 
only another Tory memory. 

Among other Tory statesmen with whom it has been 
my good fortune to become acquainted, the late Lord 
Carnarvon was the one whom I knew best. I shall 
describe a day at Highclere as a companion picture to 
the day at Hughenden and the day at Belvoir. It was 
in the month of July, 1884, that Lord Carnarvon was 
kind enough to invite me to stay at Highclere from 
Saturday to Monday. I shared with Sir Henry Howorth 
a fly from the station, which brought us to the house 
between five and six o'clock. We were received by 
Lady Winifred Herbert (now Lady Burghclere), and 
presently Lady Carnarvon came in from the garden in 
a light summer dress and garden hat. She was Lord 
Carnarvon's second wife, and then about eight-and- 
twenty. I could have echoed the words of Burke in which 
he describes his first vision of Marie Antoinette. But her 
personal beauty was perhaps the least of her charms. 
At dinner I had the honour to take in Lady Winifred, 
whom I found to be a very clever girl, highly cultivated, 
and well read in modern literature. Our conversation 
turned chiefly upon books, and I found that her knowledge 
of French and German literature far exceeded my own. 

After dinner I had some political talk with Lord 



SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN. 83 

Carnarvon, who had lately read some essays of mine 
on Tory administration from 1783 to 1881, and he 
seemed to like best those on Sir Robert Peel, agreeing 
with what I said about the vote of 1846 which turned 
Sir Robert out of office. It was a repetition, I remarked, 
of the Tory mistake of 1830, when the Tories turned 
out Peel and Wellington in return for their having 
carried the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill : two 
triumphs of revenge over prudence which the success- 
ful party soon had good reason to regret. I quoted the 
lines from Virgil, which were not in my original essay : 

Tumo tempus erit multo quum optaverit emptum 
Intactum Pallanta, et quum spolia ista diemque 
Oderit 

And he capped them promptly with : 

Non me, quicunque es, inulto 
Victor, nee longum Isetabere. 

Both the Tories after 1830 and the Conservatives 
after 1846 paid the penalty of their blunders by a long 
exclusion from power, thus leaving the way open to a 
long train of Liberal or Radical legislation fatal to their 
own principles. Lord Carnarvon thought that the 
Tories had been wrong on both occasions. But this 
was not the universal opinion ; and even so moderate 
and dispassionate a Conservative as the fifteenth Earl 
of Derby seemed inclined, during a conversation which I 
once had with him, to defend the conduct of the Protec- 
tionists. At all events, whatever the effect upon the 
party, he thought it served Sir R. Peel quite right, and 
that it was a good lesson for public men to learn, 
namely, that " a man could not do that sort of thing 
twice." 



84 TORY MEMORIES. 

On Sunday morning Lord and Lady Carnarvon, 
with some others of the party, including myself, walked 
down to the village church, which was rebuilt by Lord 
Carnarvon in 1870. After lunch some of the party 
strolled down to a prettily-situated lake surrounded by 
rhododendrons, which lay on the north side of the park. 
At one end of it stood a picturesque fishing cottage, 
originally built in the sixteenth century, and often lent 
to their friends. Lady Carnarvon said, for honeymoons. 
It was an ideal spot, certainly, for two very devoted 
lovers, and the water by moonlight must have inspired 
the dullest of mankind with a touch of romance. I 
walked from the Castle with the Countess, and found her 
a most charming companion, gay and lively, but ready 
at the same time to talk on subjects in which she sup- 
posed I was interested. I think she spoke of the Poor 
Law, and was in favour of outdoor relief. 

Both she herself and Lord Carnarvon, of course, 
knew all about the two battles of N.ewbury which were 
fought in the immediate neighbourhood, and at one of 
which a former Earl of Carnarvon, a staunch Cavalier, 
was killed. It was want of proper communications, 
combined with the rashness and folly of some of the 
younger Cavalier officers, which robbed the King of 
victory on both occasions, as on many others during the 
Civil War. They despised their enemy too much, and, 
like Lord Evandale at Drumclog, brought on a battle 
before proper dispositions had been made for it. A 
portrait of the Earl who fell at Newbury hung in the 
dining-room. He was a Dormer, and the estate came 
to the Herberts through intermarriage with the Pem- 
broke family. 

I saw Lord Carnarvon several times after this at 



SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN. 85 

his house in Portman Square. He was a Tory and, like 
the Duke of Rutland, a High Churchman. But he was 
altogether a different kind of man. The Duke was like 
a simple country gentleman. Lord Carnarvon partook 
somewhat of the temperament and tastes of Mr. Glad- 
stone. He was a scholar, and to some extent a man 
of letters. At Oxford he took a first-class in classics 
and he translated .^schylus and Horace. I could not 
find out that he was either a sportsman or a naturalist. 
He was a man of fine taste and ready sympathy, and 
naturally rather given to ideals. And it may be that 
these very virtues affected to some degree the quality 
of his statesmanship. 

I had to return to town that evening, and took 
my leave with great reluctance, just as the whole 
party set out for the kitchen-garden to eat goose- 
berries from the bush. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN (concluded). 

The Late Lord Salisbury — Sir Stafiord Northcote (Lord Iddesleigh) — 
Lord Derby (the Fourteenth Earl) — The Late Lord Beauchamp — ■ 
Lord Onslow — Some Canvassing Experiences — Mr. Brodrick^ — ^Lord 
Balfour of Burleigh — Lord Randolph Churchill — Cecil Raikes and 
his Estimate of Lord Beaconsfield — Lord Brabourne — Grant-Dufi — 
Mr. Balfour. 

With the late Lord Salisbury I was never on very 
intimate terms. But we had been contemporaries at 
Oxford, and some of my closest friends became friends 
of his through taking an active part in the Union 
debates, in which Lord Robert Cecil, as he was then, 
gave earnest of his future eminence. I saw him several 
times after he became a political leader, and he often 
spoke of his old friends. He rendered me a great ser- 
vice by looking over my essays, and also my Selected 
Speeches of Lord Beaconsfield. Some of the letters 
he wrote to me on the subject will perhaps in- 
terest the public at the present moment. The following 
relates, first of all, to the famous scene in 1862, when 
" the favourite bolted " — i.e. when Mr. Walpole, to 
Mr. Disraeh's great disgust, withdrew a hostile resolu- 
tion on Lord Palmerston's making it a Cabinet question ; 
and secondly, to the Reform Bill of 1867. I had pre- 
fixed an explanatory note to each of the speeches, 
ranging from a few hues to more than a page, and on 
some of these notes he made remarks which possess 

86 



SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN. 87 

some historical value. In a letter dated Chateau Cecil, 
October 3rd, 1881, after referring me to Sir Stafford 
Northcote for further information, he went on to say : 

Two small corrections on questions of fact in the notes may 
be worth making. In sheet 142 (June 4, '62) it is said at the end : 
" This was the conviction of Lord Derby, by whose advice Mr. Walpole 
was acting." 

You may have good evidence of this statement, but, unless 
you have, I should be disposed to doubt it. All the gossip I heard 
at the time would lead me to believe that Mr. Walpole was not acting 
in consonance with the wishes of [the then] Lord Derby. 

The note in sheet 157 on Reform Bill seems to imply that before the 
Resolutions were agreed upon and proposed to Parliament the Cabinet 
had discussed, and had found itself unable to agree upon, the Reform 
Bill which was ultimately brought in and passed. This was not the case. 
At the time the resolutions were proposed there was no Bill before 
the Cabinet ; and no definite proposition of the suffrage had been 
placed before them. When the Queen's Speech was delivered the 
Resolutions had been agreed upon in Cabinet, and nothing else had 
been even proposed to the Cabinet. It is matter of little importance, 
but I noted it merely as a matter of fact. The Resolutions disappeared 
so rapidly that nobody guessed the importance which the Cabinet 
originally attributed to them, or the labour which it cost to draw 
them up. 

When it became necessary to shorten my selections, 
I asked Lord Salisbury which of the speeches he thought 
might be omitted with the least injury to the whole. 
In reply to this question, he sent me the following 
answer, dated Hatfield House, January ist, 1882. It 
is interesting as a Salisbury criticism of Beaconsfield. 

Dear Mr. Kebbel, — I have been through the speeches, 
which I send back. The two I should leave out, if I left out any, 
are the second Royal Titles speech ("Whitaker") and that delivered 
on February 5, 1880, which is not a speech of much importance. 
I have noted two or three points. It was Lord Carnarvon — not Lord 
Bath(" noble Earl," not "noble Marquis") — whom Lord Beaconsfield 
was answering on the use of the word "rectification" in the Afghan 
speech of 1878. 



88 • TORY MEMORIES. 

In the Candahar speech last spring, in speaking of the subject 
which alone moved Lord Derby's enthusiasm, according to my 
recollection he said, "Surrender of national possessions," not 
policy. 

I have ventured to query the quotation of the Spectator's opinion 
of Lord B.'s Afghan speech. It is open to the same criticism as 
his own reference to " Whitaker" and the little girl of twelve in the 
Royal Titles speech. It may be worth while to look back to Lord 
Granville's speech on his death last May. An incident relating to 
the Candahar speech is there related which might be worth pre- 
serving. The speech which he made at Berlin was in English, 
and made an extraordinary effect. His speeches at Slough and 
Aylesbury are worth looking through. I remember one on Lord 
Ellenborough's despatch, at Slough in 1858, and another on the 
Church at Aylesbury, which were remarkable. 

Of the speeches of which he suggested the omission, 
a brief notice may be looked for. The speech on the 
Royal Titles Bill to which Lord Salisbury referred was 
delivered on March 23rd, 1876, and in it Mr. Disraeli 
quoted the evidence of a little girl who told her father 
she had found the title " Empress of India " in her 
geography book, which was forwarded by her parent 
to the Prime Minister. He also informed the House 
that a Nonconformist minister had found the title in 
Whitaker's Almanack. This was stigmatised in the 
House as " miserable frivolity and drivelling," and 
Lord Salisbury himself does not seem to have a much 
better opinion of it. I have read over the Afghan 
speech of December, 1878, so highly praised by the 
Spectator, and I confess I do not see anything in it which 
should provoke such language as some have applied 
to the Royal Titles speech. 

Lord Salisbury's statement concerning Lord Derby 
and Mr. Walpole in 1862 is specially interesting, because 
Lord Malmesbury undoubtedly leads one to believe 
that there was a distinct understanding between Lord 



SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN. 89 

Derby and Lord Palmerston to the effect that the 
Conservatives would do nothing to turn the latter out 
— not, at least, with the help of the Radicals, and they 
could not have done it without. If Lord Derby had 
advised Mr. Walpole to act as he did, that would have 
accorded with Lord Malmesbury's Diary. But as we 
now learn on high authority that he did not, we can 
only conclude with Lord Salisbury that Lord Derby 
had only undertaken not to initiate any hostile move- 
ment, still less to accept Radical support ; not that he 
pledged himself to keep Lord Palmerston in office 
under any circumstances. It has always seemed to me 
a pity that Lord Derby and Lord Palmerston could not 
manage to act together. They had been members of 
the same Government for seven years. Both were 
averse to further Parliamentary reform, and further 
Radical legislation, and both should have known that 
nothing but a combination of Whig and Conservative 
could prevent it. 

Before quitting the subject of the Selected Speeches, 
I hope I shall not be too sharply censured if I sub- 
join Lord Salisbury's testimony to my Preface : — 

Dear Mr. Kebbel, — I return the Preface. I can suggest no 
amendment to it. It is exceedingly effective and appropriate. 

Besides this correspondence on Lord Beaconsfield's 
speeches I had some interesting conversations with 
Lord Salisbury on another subject which has been 
growing in importance during the last forty years, and 
by the middle of the last quarter of the nineteenth 
century had been brought into great prominence by 
Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Jesse CoUings — I mean the 
question of small holdings, peasant farming, and peasant 



go TORY MEMORIES. 

proprietors. Lord Salisbury approved of the system in, 
theory, but saw one great difficulty in reducing it to 
practice. He did not think, indeed, that in England, 
at all events, it would be a commercial success even if 
it were possible to adopt it. But he thought its moral 
effect might be valuable, and he would not go so far as 
to say that it could never be wise to sacrifice economic 
principles to great moral considerations. He added, 
however, that the great majority of English land- 
owners were not in a position to adopt the system of 
la petite culture on a large scale, and make it the rule 
instead of the exception in English agriculture. If 
large farms were cut up into small ones there would be 
new homesteads and farm buildings to be erected on 
every estate, while at the same time the rents paid by 
these small tenants would be far more precarious than 
the income derived from men of capital and skill.* 

In accordance with Lord Salisbury's suggestion, I 
communicated with Sir Stafford Northcote, who wrote 
me the following note relative to the Canada Corn 
Bill, introduced by Lord Stanley when he held the 
office of Colonial Secretary in the Administration 
of 1841. Lord Stanley's one principle, says Mr. 
Saintsbury (" Queen's Prime Ministers "), was " pro- 
tection against foreign, but not against colonial 
industry." In the discussion on the above Bill, Lord 
Stanley recommended Sir Robert Peel to adopt Free 
Trade with the Colonies and Protection against the 
rest of the world. Commenting on my repetition 
of this statement. Sir Stafford, at that time Lord 

* I understand that at the present time the Board of Agriculture 
is prepared to lend money for this purpose. 



SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN. 91 

Iddesleigh and President of the Board of Trade, wrote 
as follows : — 

Sept. 14, 1885. 
My dear Sir, — I remember the Canada Corn Bill very well. 
But I doubt whether the idea of establishing Free Trade with the 
Colonies and Protection as against foreign nations could even then 
have been carried into effect. It would be still more difficult now. 
But this is one of the questions which must sooner or later come up 
for very careful examination. 

I have quoted this letter chiefly for the sake of the 
last sentence contained in it. 

In looking over my edition of the speeches. Sir 
Stafford recommended me to leave out the speech of 
March 17th, 1845, in which Disraeli compared Sir Robert 
Peel's treatment of the landed interest to the treatment 
of his cast-off mistress by the gentleman who had got 
tired of her. It was of no avail, said the speaker, for 
the country gentlemen to remonstrate. " When the 
beloved object has ceased to charm, it is in vain to appeal 
to the feelings. You know that is true. Almost every 
gentleman has gone through it. My honourable friends 
reproach the right honourable gentleman. The right 
honourable gentleman does what he can to keep them 
quiet. He sometimes takes refuge in arrogant silence, 
and sometimes he treats them with haughty frigidity ; 
and if they knew anything of human nature they would 
take the hint and shut their mouths. But they won't, 
and what then happens ? What happens in such cases ? 
The right honourable gentleman, being compelled to 
interfere, sends down his valet, who says in the gen- 
teelest manner, ' We can have no whining here.' " 

This was the speech which Sir Stafford Northcote, 
writing forty years afterwards, advised me to 
omit. The valet was Sidney Herbert, and, says Sir 



92 TORY MEMORIES. 

Stafford, the expression " gave great personal offence, 
and has not even now been forgotten." But I could not 
find it in my heart to leave it out. The comparison 
might not be in the best taste, and the sarcasm hghted 
on one of the most honourable and popular men in the 
House of Commons. But it is so exactly true to hfe, 
and hits off the situation so precisely, it is such an ex- 
cellent instance of the daring audacity which distin- 
guished its renowned author, that I felt that in any 
collection of his speeches it must find a place. 

Lord Derby himself (the fourteenth Earl) I never 
met. But I knew that fine old Tory, Admiral Hornby, 
who told me a good story about him, which, although 
it has been already published, wiU bear repeating. 
After resigning office in December, 1852, he ran down 
to Knowsley hke a boy escaped from school. He im- 
mediately had recourse to his gun, and during a day's 
rabbit shooting gave vent to his feehngs in the following 
characteristic manner. " Ha ! " he would cry, as a 
rabbit crossed the ride, " there goes Gladstone ; hope 
I haven't missed him. There, do you see that big 
fellow ? That is Graham. He'll be none the worse for 
a few pellets in his ribs," and so on through the rest. I 
once told this to his son, the fifteenth Earl, who laughed 
heartily at it. He said he had never heard the story, 
but that it was exactly hke his father. 

The late Lord Beauchamp, the Mr. Lygon whom I 
met at Hughenden, and the father of the present Earl, 
was one of those Tories who greatly approved of the 
Derby-Disraeh Reform Bill, and that on its merits, and 
not merely as a stroke of strategy. I once breakfasted 
with him in Belgrave Square, when I remember he said 



SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN. 93 

of that measure, which was as much Lord Derby's as 
Disraeli's, that it was " a fine thing for the country-." 
At that time the " Conservative working man " was very 
much in e\ddence. And many good judges thought 
that he had come to stay. I confess I was ahvays 
more or less doubtful on this point. But the last word 
has not been spoken on the subject yet. 

Lord Beauchamp asked me do\\Ti to jMadresfield 
more than once ; but, unhappily, I was unable to go. 
He was anxious that I should ^^Tite the history of Queen 
Anne's reign. To the conduct of the Tor\' party at that 
time he said justice had never been done, and it was a 
debt which required to be paid, " only," he added, -with 
a smile, " don't teU Lord Stanhope it was I who said 
so." If I remember aright. Lord Beauchamp referred 
more particularly to the Church party, of whom Lord 
Nottingham was the head ; and it is too often forgotten 
that then, as now, there was a remnant of the old 
Commonwealth group who openly avowed that their 
object was to overthrow the Church again as the 
Roundheads and Presb3d;erians had overthrown her 
before. This excuse for the severe measures passed by 
Queen Anne's last ministry for the better security of the 
Church has never, I think, been properly set out. 

Of the Reform Bill of 1S85 I remember Mr. W. E. 
Forster saying to me, when I met him once at Lady 
Jeune's, that probably the agricultural labourers would 
all vote Liberal at the first General Election which was 
just coming on ; but that after that they would very 
likely be found on the Conservative side. This was a 
true prophecy. At the four next elections after 18S5 
they voted hea\dly for the Conservatives. WTiether they 
are destined to find out that the &y \\'ith which the hook 



94 TORY MEMORIES. 

was baited on the fifth occasion is as purely artificial 
as three acres and a cow remains to be seen. 

With Lord Onslow I have had a good deal 
of correspondence on a subject in which he is much 
interested — namely, the condition of the peasantry, 
allotments and small holdings. The last time I saw 
him to speak to was, I think, in 1895, when the friends 
of the Tory candidate for Paddington were arranging 
their canvass. A ladies' meeting for the same purpose 
had been held just before by Lady Jeune at her house 
in Harley Street, when both she and her sister. Lady 
Tweeddale, addressed the company. I had a district 
assigned me, and I explored it with a lady companion 
from house to house. But I found most of the small 
tradesmen and householders very indifferent to great 
public questions, and absorbed in their own immediate 
interests, for which nobody can blame them. The 
taxation of ground rents, I remember, was the great 
question with most of them. I found among them a 
profound disbelief in all party promises : one party, 
they said, was just the same as the other. You got 
nothing from either when once they had secured them- 
selves in power. Which way the men who thought in 
this manner were prepared to vote I was unable to dis- 
cover. I got no pledges from any of them ; a general 
feeling of discontent and distrust seemed to permeate 
the atmosphere. I suppose in this frame of mind they 
would be more likely to vote Liberal than Conservative, 
and still more likely to vote against the Government 
than for it. 

An amusing illustration of what such men expect 
from a change of Ministers was afforded me on a previ- 
ous occasion by a small greengrocer. This man had no 



SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN. 95 

grievances, never mentioned ground rents, and was, in 
fact, and always had been, a Conservative. Yet what 
did he say when I told him I supposed he was going to 
vote for the Tory candidate in support of the existing 
Government ? " Well, sir, I don't know. I think a 
leetle change always does good everywheere." " What ? " 
I said, " a change from those who agree with you to 
those who differ, and would upset all that you value 
and beheve in ? " " Well, sir, I often think as a leetle 
change is good." And this was all I could get out of 
him. Another man who was prepared to vote Liberal 
because his neighbours did, or from some other equally 
cogent reason, declined to believe what the Liberals 
themselves said. When I selected from their pro- 
gramme some projected attack on any law, custom, 
or institution which the man himself really valued, 
all he could say was, " Oh, sir, I ca'an't think 
that." 

Another man, a farmer, gave an equally interesting 
reason for supporting the Conservatives. He couldn't 
stand the peace party, he said. Here were our soldiers 
" eating their heads off." They ought to have work to 
do. This comparison of soldiers during a long peace 
to hunters during a long frost, made in all seriousness, 
was, I thought, eminently characteristic of that com- 
bination of common-sense and stupidity nowhere 
found in such perfection as among the lower middle 
class. Another man told me that his reason for 
voting against the Tory Government was that 
" they were going on anyhow." 

Lord Onslow's book, first published twenty years 
ago, entitled " Landlords and Allotments, or the His- 
tory and Present Condition of the Allotment System," 



96 TORY MEMORIES. 

should be in great demand when we are threatened 
with still further legislation on a question with which 
Parliament has already interfered too much. 

I myself have contributed my mite towards the 
controversy, and have published tables of agricultural 
wages, perquisites, etc., drawn from between twenty 
and thirty representative counties. Sir Matthew Ridley, 
afterwards Lord Ridley, the late Lord Stanhope, and 
other landlords were kind enough to help me in the 
matter, and in the fourth edition, published in 
February, 1907, statistics are brought down to date. 
In talking with Lord Stanhope five or six years 
ago on the same question in connection with Small 
Holdings, I found that on his estate, at all events, 
the Ground Game Act had not been followed by the 
same consequences as have given it such a bad name 
in other parts of England where hares have almost 
disappeared. He told me that at their last big shoot 
at Chevening they got eighty hares — which he thought 
very good. 

While on the subject of shooting, I may mention 
Mr. St. John Brodrick, whose acquaintance I made at a 
shooting party in Surrey not very far from Peper 
Harrow. I was introduced to him by our host, and we 
very soon fell into political conversation. He was 
then Parliamentary Secretary to the War Office, and I 
thought more of having a talk with him than of the busi- 
ness of the day. Mr. Brodrick seemed quite willing to 
oblige me, but not so the old gamekeeper. He peremp- 
torily demanded that " them two gentlemen should be 
separated," and to the great amusement of our genial 
host, John Coles, at once marched us off in different 
directions. As at the time we were only walking from 



SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN. 97 

one beat to another, our talking could have done no 
harm ; but it might have seemed, and probably did in 
the keeper's eyes, to betray a frivolous indifference to 
the serious pursuit in which we were engaged, like 
talking in church, or cutting jokes at whist. 

Lord Balfour of Burleigh also calls up some humor- 
ous memories. He has often given me useful political 
information, and on one occasion I sat next him at the 
dinner of the Cecil Club, and found him a most amusing 
neighbour. I remember his describing a comic incident 
which happened, I think, in his own house,* and in which 
Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone were the chief figures. The states- 
man and his wife were going upstairs from the hall. 
In the hall two or three housemaids were peeping round 
the corner to get a sight of the great man, and when 
Mrs. Gladstone saw them she called down to her hus- 
band, " Bow, William, bow," which accordingly he did 
with his usual affability. 

I met Lord Randolph Churchill twice at Lady 
Jeune's, once at dinner and once at luncheon. At 
dinner he sat next our hostess, and I sat next to him. 
A good deal of political chaff was exchanged among us. 
Lord Randolph at that time either was, or professed to 
be, a Tory of the Tories, with no leaning towards " con- 
cession to the spirit of the age " and " all that sort of 
thing." Lady Jeune thought he was too strict, and 
when she professed to think some relaxation of pure 
Toryism was necessary we dubbed her a Canningite, a 
title which she laughingly accepted. All this was in 
fun, for of Toryism rightly understood Canning was a 
faithful representative. On the second occasion men- 
tioned I had a much longer talk with Lord Randolph. 

* Of this, however, I am not sure. 
H 



98 TORY MEMORIES. 

After luncheon I sat by him in the drawing-room dis- 
cussing the politics of the day for nearly two hours. At 
this time I think he was leader of the Fourth Party, 
and the impression which he made upon me was that 
he was the right man in the right place ; that is to say, 
that if we were to have a fourth party at all, he was a 
fit man to be at the head of it. He was eminently a 
fighting man, but whether he was of that stuff of which 
statesmen of the first class are made I could not 
make up my mind on so short an acquaintance. He 
talked very frankly, and no doubt at that time a 
more vigorous and spirited demonstration from the 
front Opposition Bench could have turned out the 
Government. The Kilmainham compact and the death 
of Gordon combined should have brought any Ministry 
to the ground. Lord Randolph and his friends, there- 
fore, had a good case, and no doubt he himself felt 
that on the Front Bench he could have made better 
use of it. He had just those qualities which make a 
man popular both in the House of Commons and on 
the platform — aggressive audacity, a fluent delivery, 
and a species of humour which, if not of the highest 
order, was well suited to his style. He had many 
of Lord Beaconsfield's gifts, and his career in some few 
particulars resembled his. But I doubt if he had the 
divincB particula aurcB which just makes the difference 
between the extremely clever man and the man of 
genius. However, many men certainly inferior to Lord 
Randolph have been Prime Ministers. 

As I dip into my memory other names come rising 
to the surface, all of whom were connected in one way 
or another with the Tory party. Cecil Raikes I knew 
well. He was Postmaster-General in Lord Salisbury's 



SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN. 99 

second Administration, and was always ready to assist a 
political journalist with advice or information. He was 
one of those Tories who, while warm admirers and loyal 
supporters of Lord Beaconsfield, were inclined to regard 
him rather as a soldier of fortune.* It would be an 
insult to Lord Beaconsfield' s memory to compare him 
with Dugald Dalgetty, who, before joining either Cava- 
lier or Roundhead, desired to know firstly " on which 
side his services would be in most honourable request ; 
and, secondly, whilk is a corollary of the first, by whilk 
party they are most likely to be most gratefully re- 
quited." Yet if Lord Beaconsfield was really a soldier 
of fortune it is with such men that we must rank 
him. Now, we must remember that when Lord 
Beaconsfield first entered Parliament in 1837 ^^ a sup- 
porter of Sir Robert Peel, the Whigs were more in need 
of support than the Tories. Sir James Graham and 
Mr. Stanley had carried their biting tongues and 
their brilliant wit to the Conservative camp. Mr. 
Gladstone was the hope and the pride of the younger 
generation of Tories. In Lord Lincoln, Sidney Herbert, 
and Mr. Cardwell, Peel had most able lieutenants. 
And had Disraeli chosen to offer his sword to the Whigs, 
he would have been welcomed and rewarded. 

On the other hand, as he himself often said, the Jew 
is naturally a Tory, though ill-treatment had made him a 
Liberal. All Disraeli's proclivities lay in the direction of 
Toryism, and though no doubt personally he had more 
in common with Lord Palmerston than with Sir Robert 
Peel, yet as Palmerston acted with the Whigs, and 
supported their principles and traditions, which Dis- 
raeli abhorred, he could only have joined their ranks 

,, * See ante, p. 65. 



100 TORY MEMORIES. 

from purely selfish motives, which are not necessary to 
explain his alliance with the Tories. All this I often 
said to Raikes. But the opposite idea had taken pos- 
session of his mind, and Lord Beaconsfield, almost to 
the last, continued to pay the penalty of his early con- 
nection with the Radicals, although he had demonstrated 
over and over again that he was only actuated by 
hostility to the Whigs, and not at all by any love of 
Radical or revolutionary measures. But the prejudice 
so created died hard, or rather did not die at all ; and 
Raikes, I think, remained imbued with it all the time 
I knew him. I have heard him say, too, that he really 
thought Lord Salisbury an abler man than Lord 
Beaconsfield. 

Another Minister who began as a Tory, changed 
into a Whig, and reverted to his original form in the 
latter part of his life was Knatchbull-Hugessen, after- 
wards Lord Brabourne, Under-Secretary for the Colonies 
in Mr. Gladstone's first Administration. I knew him 
at Oxford when, like Lord Robert Cecil, he was a star 
at the Union. In those days he was a hot Tory and 
Protectionist, and as I knew several of his Union friends, 
I often met him at their wine parties, and used to hear 
them talk of going down to the Union if it were a debate 
night, as if it were the House of Commons. He was a 
very handsome man, and a popular though not a power- 
ful speaker. He married a Miss Southwell, the sister of 
one of my well beloved college contemporaries, Marcus 
Southwell of Exeter, whose other sister married Dimsdale 
of Corpus, afterwards Baron Dimsdale, a well-known 
figure in the House of Commons, and an intimate friend 
of mine to the day of his death. The two sisters were 
both pretty girls, and came up to Oxford at Com- 



SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN. loi 

memoratioiij where they won the hearts of two 
conspicuous Oxford Tories, and they well deserve a 
place in Tory memories. 

Sir Mountstuart Grant -Duff was not a Tory Minister, 
nor a Tory at all. But I cannot omit mention of 
him, as our acquaintance dated from Oxford days. 
He, too, was a light at the Union, principally on 
foreign politics. He had travelled more than most 
undergraduates in those days, and had "heard the war- 
drum throb in the vineyards of Pesth." He was Under- 
Secretary of State for India and afterwards for the 
Colonies. I often met him in London Society, and we 
always had a genial talk. We differed, of course, in 
politics. But on one thing we always agreed. We had 
a mutual friend at Oxford in George David Boyle, 
who died Dean of Salisbury. The first question 
asked by one or other of us as often as we met was, 
" Have you seen Boyle lately ? " to which the invari- 
able answer would be, after " Yes " or "No," as might 
happen, " How is it he is not a bishop yet ? Nature 
clearly meant him for one." He was a tall, handsome, 
stately man with a nameless episcopal air about him, 
and Grant-Duff and myself had always agreed that 
Nature would be much wronged if Boyle were not pro- 
moted to the Bench. 

The reader may be surprised that I have said 
nothing as yet of Mr. Balfour. The reason is partly 
that my acquaintance with him is of later date, partly 
that the political conversations in which he was kind 
enough to indulge me related to events and individuals 
which can only be touched upon in these pages with 
considerable reserve. Before he became Prime Minister, 
and indeed ever since I have been engaged on pohtical 



102 TORY MEMORIES. 

work which made it necessary that from time to time I 
should receive some assistance from headquarters, by 
Mr. Balfour such assistance has been always most 
readily and most kindly given. One thing he told 
me some three years ago, I think, which has received 
abundant illustration since. I remember asking him, 
a propos of some Government Bill which the Oppo- 
sition were very hotly contesting — I think it was the 
Defaulting Authorities BiU — why he had not used the 
closure more frequently, as the factious and obstruc- 
tive tactics with which the measure was encountered 
would have abundantly justified recourse to it. He 
said he did not wish to furnish too many precedents 
for the employment of a weapon which would be 
sure to be turned against the Unionists whenever 
their opponents came in. It would not be very long 
before they did, he thought ; and then he was sure 
they would bring in some most " disastrous measures." 
They have brought in most disastrous measures, and 
they have made unsparing use of the guillotine. Mr. 
Balfour's moderation did not avail him. The Radicals 
couldn't have used it with greater severity if he had 
given them double the number of precedents. But I 
was struck by the tone of his remarks. He seemed to 
think that the Unionists had outstayed their welcome ; 
and if he did not foresee such an overwhelming majority 
as the Radicals finally secured, it was pretty clear to 
me that he foresaw a Unionist defeat. He evidently 
believed that the English people were tired of hearing 
Aristides called just. 

On a later occasion, after the Fiscal question had 
come to the front, he spoke briefly about the state of the 
party. He seemed much depressed, not at the prospect 



SOME OTHER TORY STATESMEN. 103 

of losing office, for that seemed far from unwelcome 
to him, but rather at the conduct of friends and 
colleagues whose defection it was easy to see had 
caused him much pain. But he said next to nothing, 
and it was only by a word dropped casually here and 
there that I obtained a glimpse into the state of his 
mind. However, that is all past and gone. Adversity 
has reunited those who found that, large as the Unionist 
party might be, there was no room in it for dissension. 
We should probably have had a Liberal Government 
in office if the Fiscal question never had arisen, but not 
with the enormous majority which it now commands. 
Dissenters, Free Traders, and Socialists, swelhng the 
ranks of the regular Liberal party, formed a combina- 
tion too powerful to be resisted ; but Mr. Balfour saw 
through the game in a moment. He saw that the 
Government, while obliged to be civil to all groups in 
turn, were really bound hand and foot to the Dis- 
senters ; and that behind all the inextricable compli- 
cations of the Education Bill, lay one single and con- 
sistent purpose : the destruction of the Church of 
England — not perhaps really desired by the occupants 
of the Ministerial coach, but openly and honestly pro- 
claimed as the one object of their exertions by those 
who have their shoulders to the wheel. 



CHAPTER IX. 

TORY MEMBERS I HAVE KNOWN. 

Baron Dimsdale — Origin of the Title — The Baron as a Party Man — A 
Stolid Audience — Convivial Electioneering— Lord Glamis and the 
Memory of William III. — An Elegant Metaphor — Baron Dimsdale 
and his Tenants — Mr. Albert Pell — A Retort upon Lord Curzon — 
Pell's Views on the Poor Law — Sewell Read— Sir George Baden- 
Powell — The Education Bill of 1902 — Mr. Balfour's Frankness. 

One of my most intimate friends among Tory members 
of the House of Commons was Baron Dimsdale, member 
first of all for Hertford, and after 1885 for the Herts 
division of that county. He was a son of the fourth 
baron, whose ancestor had received this title from the 
Empress Catherine of Russia, 1762. The Dimsdales were 
an old county family, but the first baron was a physician 
famous for his treatment of small-pox ; and he was 
sent for by the Empress to inoculate her for that terrible 
disease. He went, as one may say, with a rope round 
his neck, for what would have happened to him had 
the Empress died under his hands it is not difficult to 
guess. Even as it was, his life was in danger from the 
jealousy and hostility inspired by a foreigner being 
summoned to her bedside ; and the Empress knew it, 
for she enjoined him to depart secretly, and had relays of 
post horses placed in readiness for him all along the road 
till he got beyond the Russian frontier. He was rewarded 
with a title, a large sum of money, and costly furs, which 
in Russia only the royal family were allowed to wear. 



TORY MEMBERS I HAVE KNOWN. 105 

All this I heard at different times from my friend's 
lips, and I had plenty of time ; for we were contem- 
poraries at Oxford, though not at the same college. 
He was a gentleman commoner of Corpus, and pre- 
pared himself for the House of Commons like so 
many others of the same standing — Cecil, KnatchbuU- 
Hugessen, Ward Hunt, Portal, Sclater-Booth (after- 
wards Lord Basing), and others — by assiduous attend- 
ance at the Union. Dimsdale rather cultivated a florid 
style of speaking, and affected — it was certainly not 
natural to him — a slightly pompous delivery. His chief 
delights at Oxford were oratory and hospitality. His 
little dinners at " The Cross " were well known to a 
select few ; and afterwards in London he exercised the 
same noble virtue with generous frequency. Some- 
times he invited his friends to Verey's, sometimes to the 
Old Blue Posts in Cork Street, which was almost the last 
of the old taverns frequented by bons vivants, and was 
famous for its beef-steaks and its old port wine at i6s. 
a bottle : a fitting house for the symposium of fine old 
Tories such as gathered round Dimsdale's table. He 
continued this practice all his life. I have once or twice 
dined with him at the Oxford and Cambridge Club ; 
but after he became a member of the Carlton, we always 
dined at some tavern or restaurant. He could not ask 
strangers to dinner at the Carlton. But he gave them 
such refreshments as were lawful, and I have a vivid 
recollection of sitting with him on the ottoman in the 
middle of the haU at that club, each of us with a large 
glass of foaming brandy-and-soda in his hand, the 
admired of all beholders. 

He entered the House of Commons as member for 
Hertford in 1866, when that borough returned two 



io6 TORY MEMORIES. 

members. After the Reform Bill of 1867 it returned 
only one, and Baron Dimsdale gave up his seat to Mr. 
Balfour. He re-entered the House, however, as member 
for the Hertford division of the county in 1885, a seat 
he retained till 1892, when he retired from public life. 
He was missed by his own party, and perhaps by many 
others. " You always saw his broad back," said Mr. 
Pell, " in front of you, going into the right Lobby." He 
was a devout party man, and indeed party loyalty was 
with him a species of religion. All the manoeuvres by 
which either votes or seats are won were familiar to 
him, and in his eyes the end justified the means, no 
matter what they were. He told me once that one 
Saturday night at Hertford he cleared off the whole 
remaining stock of the principal fishmonger ; and he 
used to speak with admiration of a nobleman famous 
for his electioneering tactics, " who loved a job for its own 
sake." While he was in Parliament I used to hear a 
good deal more of the inner life of that assembly than I 
have heard since. I believe that his anecdotes chiefly 
bore reference to the subject of intoxication, of which, 
as it is now obsolete among our respectable representa- 
tives, no more need be said. 

I helped Dimsdale, or was supposed to help him, in 
his canvassing in 1885. I know I had to make two 
speeches to political meetings, and if they did anybody 
any good, I should be surprised and delighted to 
heaf it. This was the first election in which the 
peasantry had votes, and I had an object lesson which I 
am not likely to forget. After dining with Dimsdale 
and one of his sons at Hitchin, we drove out to Luton, 
where a meeting of labourers was to be held, I suppose 
in the schoolroom. We — the upper three — sat on a 



TORY MEMBERS I HAVE KNOWN. 107 

raised platform, and looked down upon a sea of white 
smock frocks and of upturned faces, neither of which 
moved a muscle or so much as winked throughout the 
whole proceedings. The listeners, if they did listen, were 
most quiet and orderly, partly it may be, because they 
did not understand a single word of what was said ; and 
I know I kept thinking all the time of Tennyson's 
Northern Farmer and the Parson's sermon : "I niver 
knawed what a meaned," etc. When my turn came to 
speak, I felt I might as well be addressing myself to 
empty benches as to full ones. The men stared straight 
before them, and gave no sign of intelligence whatever. 
It was disheartening, and yet I daresay I was quite 
wrong. AU who know the English agricultural labourer 
well are aware that of all the undemonstrative human 
beings who ever existed, he is perhaps the most so, if we 
except a small class who are at the top of the social ladder 
of which he is at the bottom. Extremes meet in this 
respect as in many others. They may all the time have 
been considering in their own minds nice distinctions, 
deep political problems, and the great blessings of the 
existing British Constitution. But they did not look as 
if they were. And I cannot pretend that it was a 
stimulating meeting to speak to : I could only console 
myself with the reflection that Toryism is not an 
emotional creed. 

We drove back to Hitchin, where a sumptuous 
supper had been provided for us — soup, fish, roast 
pheasants, champagne, and cigars, and whisky-and- 
water to wind up with, so that it was nearly one o'clock 
infthe morning before we got to bed. If all canvassing 
were like this, I thought I shouldn't so much mind a 
good deal more of it. The speaking was a bore, no 



io8 TORY MEMORIES. 

doubt ; but there was balm in Gilead whenever Dims- 
dale was at hand. 

Another electioneering banquet took place either 
at Hertford or at Hitchin, I am not certain which, and 
again I had to stand up and say something. Now, as 
public speaking is not my strong point, and I never can 
get through it without a feeling that I must be boring 
my audience even more than I am boring myself, the 
sacrifice I made in the cause of friendship may be 
imagined. However, one can't go on eating a man's 
dinners, drinking his wine, and shooting his game with- 
out making him some kind of return ; and I thought, 
and think still, that these little oratorical contributions 
of which he seemed to think so much were a cheap price 
to pay for the many pleasures for which I was indebted 
to him. 

At this last-mentioned dinner I sat next to Lord 
Glamis, the eldest son of Lord Strathmore, who related 
to me an incident which I hope he will not mind 
my mentioning again. He said that when serving with 
his regiment in Ireland, he was invited to a public dinner, 
where, of course, the glorious and immortal memory 
of William III. was duly proposed. " Now," said Lord 
Glamis, " what was I to do ? Our family had always 
been on the other side. I could not possibly drink 
that toast," so I think he said that though he stood up 
with the rest in honour of the deliverer, like Naaman in 
the House of Rimmon, and raised his glass to his lips, 
he put it down untasted. I was much interested in 
this curious Jacobite survival. It was something, I 
thought, to have caught across the gulf of centuries the 
lingering fragrance of the White Rose. 

Dimsdale's love of speaking often drew him into 



TORY MEMBERS I HAVE KNOWN. 109 

those debating societies of which many existed in those 
days and do perhaps still in various quarters of the town. 
In Fleet Street there was the Temple Forum, and in the 
immediate vicinity Cogers' Hall. Then there was 
another, I fancy, a little further west. I'm not sure that 
it did not meet in the hall of one of the minor inns 
— Lyon's Inn, perhaps. But I went there with Dimsdale 
in his younger days, when he spoke to a very Radical 
audience in a strain of superfine Toryism, which galled 
one honest gentleman so much that he described the 
offender as one who " grovelled in his own slime." This 
elegant metaphor, so far from offending the orator who 
had provoked it, amused him so much that whenever 
debating clubs were mentioned he always asked if we 
didn't remember the evening when So-and-so said — 
speaking very slowly with his chin a little tucked in — 
that " I grovelled in my own slime." It was not for 
want of practice that Dimsdale didn't make a greater 
figure as a debater in Parliament. But his voice was 
not strong, and I think he only cared to speak when he 
had got up a subject for himself. 

I stayed with him two or three times at Essendon, 
when he showed me all the presents the Empress of 
Russia had given his ancestor, costly furs, among them 
that of the black fox, worn only by the Imperial family. 
The baroness, as just mentioned, was the sister of my old 
Oxford friend, Marcus Southwell. The Miss Dimsdales 
were there, and the eldest son, then, I think, at Eton. 
The family had possessed Essendon for some generations. 
They were an offshoot from a knightly family in Essex, 
and there was no considerable estate immediately round 
the house, but the baron had other property just where 
the three counties of Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, 



no TORY MEMORIES. 

and Essex meet. Here he used to come down sometimes 
and stay with his agent^ and dine with his tenants. 
There was one old fellow, I remember, who always wore 
white cord breeches and was quite one of the old school. 
I dined at his house with the baron and his son, and 
another Tory farmer, also the baron's tenant, whose 
Toryism did not rest on quite so firm a basis as his land- 
lord's. Our host gave us a capital dinner, and any 
amount of port wine afterwards, under the influence 
of which we discussed the whole round of political ques- 
tions of the day and the Irish Church in particular. 
We all made speeches, two or three apiece ; but whether 
we succeeded in persuading the wavering farmer to take 
our view of Irish Disestablishment I rather doubt. 

The baron himself was no sportsman, and while the 
rest of us were shooting he amused himself by making 
a round of his farmhouses, and lunching substantially at 
each. Those were the days before the agricultural 
depression began, when the farmers were prosperous 
and jolly, and they Uked a landlord like Dimsdale, who 
could make himself at home with them. In the bad 
years since those days, I am sorry to say that some of 
those who entertained us so hospitably came to grief. 
Mr. Arch, too, and his agents have been busy in that 
part of the country, and Toryism, I fear, no longer stands 
where it did. 

Some other electioneering experiences on the Tory 
side I had previously enjoyed in my own native county, 
Leicestershire. Mr. Albert PeU, who sat for South 
Leicestershire, now the Harborough Division, from 
1868 to 1885, was an old friend of ours, and in 
the autumn of 1867, when Mr. Packe retired, Mr. 
Pell came forward in his place. After a sharp 



TORY MEMBERS I HAVE KNOWN. iii 

contest he was defeated by Tertius Paget, a Leicester 
banker with great influence in the county. But 
at the General Election of 1868 Lord Curzon and 
Mr. Pell were returned, the latter just beating Paget 
by the narrow majority of 25. Mr. Pell had married 
the only daughter of Sir Henry Halford, who sat for 
the county from 1832 to 1857, when he was suc- 
ceeded by Lord Curzon, who kept the seat till the 
death of his father, Lord Howe, in 1870, when 
he was replaced by Mr. Heygate. After their mar- 
riage Mr. and Mrs. Pell lived for a time at Guils- 
borough, in Northamptonshire, and moved after- 
wards to Hazelbeach House, near Maidwell, and about 
half-way between Northampton and Harborough. Here 
I visited him on two occasions, in October, 1867, and 
again in November or December, 1868. Pell himself 
was a farmer, and occupied one of the Wistow farms 
for several years. He was an excellent agricultural 
representative and retained the confidence of the Leices- 
tershire farmers up to the last. Even in 1880, when, 
as I heard a farmer say afterwards at the Farmers' Club, 
they wished to frighten the landlords a little bit. Pell 
kept his seat, though Paget was returned at the head of 
the poU and Heygate was dismissed. 

We had great fun over the election of 1868. At that 
time I was staying at Hazelbeach, and a party was 
made up to drive over to Lutterworth, where the two 
Conservative candidates, Lord Curzon and Mr. Pell, 
were to address a public meeting. Mrs. Pell and her 
sister-in-law, Mrs. John Halford, Lady Isham from 
Lamport, John Halford, and myself made up the party, 
and as soon as we got out of the carriage at Lutter- 
worth we commenced to make our way on foot to the 



112 TORY MEMORIES. 

market-place, where the two orators were to address 
the people from a cart. As we walked along the streets, 
the three ladies in front, and John Halford and myself 
behind, we certainly didn't court the popularity of the 
mob. The streets were, of course, rather crowded, and 
wherever there was an open space on the walls invita- 
tions to vote for Pell and Curzon, or else for Paget, who 
was fighting for the seat which he won the year before, 
were posted up in chalk. The ladies, as they walked along, 
freely rubbed out every inscription in favour of Paget, 
regardless of the black looks which they encountered 
from some, or the remonstrances audibly addressed to 
them by others. A group of half a dozen roughs 
slouched along in the middle of the street a yard or 
two behind, and gave vent to their feelings by declar- 
ing that " some folks 'ud go to prison if they did that." 
But they confined their indignation to words, and we 
reached the platform uninjured. The careless con- 
fidence and smiling faces of the three offenders, unable 
to conceive the possibihty of anybody venturing to 
molest them, and regarding the whole thing as an excel- 
lent joke, had perhaps the effect upon the bystanders 
which such an attitude generally produces. It has its 
effect upon bulls and dogs, and if the " souters " at Lut- 
terworth meditated any further demonstrations they 
wisely forbore, and reserved themselves for the speeches, 
when they could shout to their hearts' content. 

After Mr. Pell had spoken. Lord Curzon addressed 
himself to a subject which he no doubt thought would 
come home to their feelings very closely. It was the 
time of the cattle plague, and the agricultural interest 
was pressing for restrictions on importation. Lord 
Curzon drew a gloomy picture of what would happen if 



TORY MEMBERS I HAVE KNOWN. 113 

a Liberal Government came in, which would certainly 
refuse all such precautions, leaving the disease to spread 
till our herds of cattle were decimated. " That is what 
you have to expect," said his lordship, " and then you'll 
none of you get any more roast beef and plum pudding 
on Sundays." "Oi don't get nun, even nyow," cried one 
from the crowd in a strong Leicestershire accent, amid 
the inextinguishable roars of all who heard him. He 
was evidently the local wag. He was in his shirt- 
sleeves, with his arms up to the elbow thrust under a 
large leather apron. Whether he was a cobbler or a 
blacksmith I could not quite determine ; most likely 
he was the former, for by the operation of some law 
hitherto undiscovered by philosophers, cobblers are more 
prone to politics than blacksmiths. 

We drove back to Hazelbeach to dinner ; and I 
spent a pleasant evening talking over old times with 
Mrs. PeU. The next day I was introduced to her cats, 
of which she had a great number of a very choice breed. 
Most of them were chained up in a row of little kennels, 
and they, had become almost as famous as Dandie 
Dinmont's terriers. In all parts of the country, if you 
noticed a very long-haired grey cat, as likely as not you 
would be told that it came from Hazelbeach. She 
realised high prices for some of them. 

I remember other election scenes in the same 
neighbourhood. There was a bye-election in South 
Leicestershire in 1870, when Lord Curzon succeeded 
to the peerage, and party spirit ran very high. 
The contest lay between Heygate (Tory), and Paget 
(Liberal), the former being returned by a majority of 
seven hundred. The mob were very violent. A rela- 
tion of mine drove voters into Lutterworth from the 



114 TORY MEMORIES. 

neighbouring villages, and some scenes occurred worthy 
of being described by Lever. I remember their xarry- 
ing an old bedridden clergyman to the poll. At first 
he refused to go — no wonder ! — ^but at length, having 
huddled on some clothes, he consented to be carried 
downstairs and placed in the carriage. My enter- 
prising relative drove up to the polling place at full 
gallop, scattering the crowd in all directions amid a 
storm of yells and hisses. However, they got their 
man out in safety ; and while the driver remained upon 
the box pelted with mud and other missiles, the owner 
of the vehicle and a farmer friend who came with them 
made a bridge with their backs for the parson, while 
another friend led him by the hand to record his vote. 
They then drove him home and brought some more 
back, and it all finished up with a big fight in the 
evening, when the mob tried to storm the Hind Hotel, 
where the Tories were refreshing themselves after 
their exertions. They were beaten off by the besieged, 
though not without considerable difficulty, for the 
assailants were very savage, and many heavy blows 
were given and taken. Of the two gentlemen who 
carried the parson on their backs one had several teeth 
knocked out, while the other had a nose swollen to the 
size of a Jargonelle pear. The coachman got a black 
eye. An unoffending " blue " gentleman who was 
looking out at the scene from his own doorway was 
gently tapped on the proboscis by an indignant " green " 
with a fist like a cricket ball, and sent back into the 
interior with anguish on his countenance. 

The Tories, where deficient in numbers, sometimes 
made up for it in wit. I remember very well that some 
malignant " blue " circulated the following anecdote 



TORY MEMBERS I HAVE KNOWN. 115 

at the expense of the rival candidate, tending to show 
the narrow range of theological learning to be ex- 
pected from the " greens." A candidate at a public 
meeting, in the course of being heckled by his hearers, 
was asked — so ran the story — whether he would vote 
for the revision of the Decalogue. Not knowing in 
the least what the Decalogue was, he whispered for 
information to the Chairman, who was just as ignorant 
as himself. However, something had to be said, so he 
told the perplexed orator that he believed it had some- 
thing to do either with the Cattle Plague or else with 
flogging in the Army — he wasn't sure which. Where- 
upon the now well-informed speaker turned to his inter- 
rogator, and assured him that he would vote not only for 
the revision of the Decalogue, but for its total abolition. 
Before returning from this digression, I may re- 
mark that it was not all at once that the ten-pounders 
reconciled themselves to the enforcement of the law 
against bribery and corruption. In many places it 
was commonly believed that your vote was your pro- 
perty, which you were at liberty to dispose of to the 
greatest advantage. I remember a report that a voter 
— I think at St. Albans — brought an action against 
the member for the sum to which he considered him- 
self entitled. This, however, is probably a myih. But 
the following amusing instance of the pertinacity with 
which the old class of voters clung to their electoral 
traditions was given me by a Yorkshire friend, who 
was Chairman of the Conservative Committee for some 
York^ire borough before 1867. The Committee had 
given out that they were firmly resolved to discontinue 
all such proceedings as were known to be illegal, and 
which had recently caused more than one important 



ii6 TORY MEMORIES. 

borough to be disfranchised. But the voterfe did not 
take it seriously. They thought the declaration was 
only a dodge to deceive their opponents. Acting upon 
this conviction, one day, when the Committee were 
sitting, a local canvasser came into the room and whis- 
pered to the Chairman : " There's a man below, sir, 
has got a cow to sell ; what do you think ? " " Go 
along," said the Chairman ; " haven't you been told 
that nothing of the kind was to be done at this elec- 
tion ? " The emissary retired, but was soon followed 
by another, who likewise whispered in the Chairman's 
ear : " There's a man downstairs, sir, has got a cottage 
to let ; what do you think ? " This disciple of jobbery 
was also promptly ejected with a severe rebuke. But 
it was long before the fact was fully realised that the 
Committee were in earnest, and the Chairman was 
again asked more than once " what he thought " 
about some equally nefarious transaction. 

But let nobody suppose that the suppression of 
direct bribery was the triumph of pure honesty. There 
are many ways of influencing a man's vote besides 
giving him three times the value of a cow or three times 
the rent of a cottage. The only really immoral bribery 
is that which induces a man, in return for some favour 
shown, to vote against his conscience ; and an instance 
of this may be quoted from Thackeray's " Book of 
Snobs," in which Major Ponto confesses to having voted 
Tory, though he had always been a Liberal, to please 
Lord Bareacres, who had given him a good deal of shoot- 
ing, and been very polite to his wife and daughter. Is 
this kind of bribery extinct now ? 

I have gazed with interest on some of the old 
nomination boroughs, many of which probably were 



TORY MEMBERS I HAVE KNOWN. 117 

never much larger than they were in 1832 ; but as 
other towns were much smaller the contrast was less 
conspicuous. I have visited Great Bedwin and Lud- 
gershaU, in Wiltshire, once represented by George 
Selwyn, whose house, when I was there, was still stand- 
ing. Bedwin, close to Savernake Forest, was a pocket 
borough belonging to the Ailesbury family ; and an 
old man who recollected the Golden Age told me 
which were the " vote houses," as they were called, 
and said he remembered at election times the empty beer 
barrels and the "free and independent" voters rolling 
about the streets together. At Ludgershall I lunched at 
the principal inn, then of course little more than a public 
house, and I remember being struck with the immense size 
of the beds in one or two bedrooms which I entered. I 
wondered within myself whether half a dozen voters were 
ever tumbled into one of them after an electioneering 
orgy ; for though in a pocket borough there was no 
necessity for bribes, members were expected to treat 
their constituents on a very liberal scale. 

The subject in which Mr. Pell — to whom I return 
with apologies for my long digression — took the greatest 
interest was, I think, the Poor-Law. He believed it to 
be possible by the strict enforcement of the workhouse 
test to stamp out pauperism. I believe he regarded 
outdoor relief as one of the worst abuses which had 
survived the Reform Bill. This view of the subject was 
not in strict accordance with Tory traditions, and quite 
contrary to the principles of Mr. Pitt, as I once told 
him. But he would give the stereotyped answer that 
times were changed, that the increase of the population 
would by itself have made Mr. Pitt's idea impractic- 
able ; and to show that his own theory was both prac- 



ii8 TORY MEMORIES. 

tical and possible, he pointed to the success which had 
attended Sir Baldwin Leighton's effort to stamp out 
pauperism on his own estate in Shropshire. Pell and 
Clare .Sewell Read worked together in Parliament as 
the leaders of the agricultural party, though perhaps Mr. 
Chaplin also is entitled to a place among them. I knew 
Mr. Read, too, and had many talks with him, and many 
letters from him on questions of labour and agriculture, 
though I was never able, unfortunately, to accept his 
kind invitations to visit him at Honingham, in Norfolk. 

Neither he nor Mr. Pell adopted any other than 
quite a plain style of speaking. Mr. Read, like Mr. 
Henley, was fond of speaking with his hands in his 
pockets. It is not a very dignified attitude, but it 
conveys an impression of insouciance and self-confidence 
which perhaps has its advantages in certain circum- 
stances, though it would not be viewed with a very 
favourable eye if adopted by a new member. I was 
present at the farmers' dinner at the Salisbury Hotel 
in 1885, when Read announced his resignation of the 
post which Mr. Disraeli had given him in the Ministry 
of 1874, as Secretary of the Local Government Board. 
The occasion was the refusal of the Government to take 
some step for the protection of cattle against disease 
imported from abroad ; and I remember I got well 
blown up for neglecting to step across Fleet Street and 
take the news to the Standard in Shoe Lane. Mr. Read 
did not minimise the extent of the sacrifice which he 
had made. Fifteen hundred a year was no slight loss, 
he said, to a tenant farmer. Of course, he was loudly 
cheered, and deservedly so. But I have often thought 
that the sacrifice was hardly called for. 

I met the late Sir George Baden-Powell for the first 



TORY MEMBERS I HAVE KNOWN. 119 

time at Alderley Park, where he was staying with the 
late Lord Stanley of Alderley. He had not then become 
the Tory member for the Kirkdale Division of Liverpool ; 
but he was bent on a political career, and I remember 
thinking how very likely he was to succeed. He always 
seemed to me one of the cleverest men I ever met — 
almost as clever as a man can be without being a genius. 
He was at Balliol, and he told me a good deal that was 
interesting about Jowett. Jowett dissuaded him from 
reading for honours, but recommended him instead to 
try for the English Essay prize. Baden-Powell took his 
advice, and it was followed by some valuable hints for his 
Essay on " The Political and Social Results of the 
Absorption of Small States by Large," which gained the 
Chancellor's prize in 1876. It was in 1885 that he was 
returned for Liverpool, and I have no doubt that if he 
had lived he would in due time have had a seat upon 
the Front Bench. He seemed to be taking to colonial 
business. But my acquaintance with him, after all, was 
cemented rather by field sports than by politics, though 
it is as a Tory member that he finds a place in this 
chapter. He married in 1892 Frances, daughter of C. 
Wilson, Esq., of Sydney, who brought him a considerable 
fortune and gave him an independent position. 

While the Education Bill of 1902 was going through 
the House I saw a good deal of Professor J ebb, who was 
kind enough to let me interview him whenever I wished. 
He was very indignant with the Kenyon-Slaney clause, 
which he thought was quite inconsistent with the original 
principle of the BiU, and we were both in hope that it 
would be repealed or modified in the House of Lords. 
But, in spite of the efforts made by the Dukes of Norfolk 
and Northumberland, it was accepted, chiefly, if I 



120 TORY MEMORIES. 

remember, through the influence of the Duke of Devon- 
shire. The Lord Advocate, Mr. Graham Murray, was 
also good enough to talk with me on the Education 
Question. He, of course, agreed with Professor Jebb. I 
wondered then, and wonder still, why the Government 
either accepted the Kenyon-Slaney amendment or re- 
jected the Duke of Northumberland's. But the old 
Whig tradition, jealousy of the clergy, still lingers in 
aristocratic circles, whether Whig or Tory — for on this 
question again the Tories have departed from their 
original principles. I asked Lord Stanhope if nothing 
could be done to save the Duke of Northumberland's 
amendment, but he said it was too late. I thought, 
however, that a better fight might have been made for it. 
I have mentioned Lord Balfour of Burleigh in 
an earlier chapter, . but I am reminded that I 
saw him several times at the Scotch Office, and 
that he always told me what I wanted to know. 
I have never found what I have read of in print — 
any disposition on the part of such men to evade 
speaking out. I know it is possible for a skilful and 
experienced diplomatist to talk to you in a strain of the 
greatest apparent frankness, and yet with such skilful 
and well-concealed reservations that when you leave 
his presence you find you have been told nothing ; but 
I never had occasion to suspect such artifices in any of 
my conversations with members of either House of 
Parliament ; and I may be allowed to add that whenever 
I have sought for information from Mr. Balfour him- 
self, he has always spoken to me with a perfect frank- 
ness which no man could suspect of being simulated. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE CAVE. 

Lord Palmerston's Domestic Policy— Formation of the Cave — How the 
Whigs were "Dished" — Lord Grosvenor's Amendment — The Day 
and its Brief Career. 

Before passing on to those more general memories 
which to many people will^ perhaps, be more enter- 
taining than my memories of statesmen and politicians, 
I must devote one short chapter to an episode in our 
political history with which I happened to be rather 
closely mixed up : I mean the famous " Cave " in which 
the AduUamites abode in the year 1866-7. 

With the death of Lord Palm^rston one chapter of 
our constitutional history came to aii ^nd. It represents 
just one generation, from 1832 to 1865. It was an era 
of moderate, middle-class reform to which both Whigs 
and Tories accommodated themselves, the latter taking 
the name of Conservatives instead of one which the 
later bearers of it had made so unpopular. Lord 
Palmerston, as much a Tory at heart as he had 
been in the days of Lord Liverpool, dared no longer call 
himself one, and as the Liberals appeared to be the 
winning side and to offer him the most congenial sphere 
of action, he donned their livery and observed their rites 
and ceremonies with sufficient decency till he became 
Prime Minister himself, when, though he still called 
himself a Liberal, he never cared to conceal his con- 



122 TORY MEMORIES. 

tempt for Liberalism. That he sympathised more or 
less with the Liberal party on the Continent was due 
to the fact that he thought English interests were best 
promoted by siding with them. This was also Mr. 
Canning's creed. The restored monarchies showed little 
inclination to respect the wishes of Great Britain or to 
listen to the counsels of one to whom they were so 
deeply indebted — a debt too great, perhaps, to be either 
acknowledged or repaid. He saw, too, that the policy 
of the despotic Powers was irritating and stimulating the 
revolutionary spirit in Europe, and it seemed to him, 
therefore, that in checking them wherever he could he 
was acting on Conservative principles. 

His domestic policy requires no explanation. Mr. 
Bright and Mr. Cobden, Mr. Milner Gibson and Mr. 
Gladstone understood it quite well. There was a cer- 
tain audacity in the manner in which he openly sup- 
ported by his vote proposals which he condemned in 
his speech. " I shall vote for the hon. member's 
motion," he was wont to say, " to show that I am not 
opposed to the principle," knowing all the time right 
well that the principle would never with his consent be 
reduced to practice. The system was perfectly suc- 
cessful. Lord John Russell's "Rest and be thankful" 
was practically the creed of two-thirds of the nation. 
But they had got used to Liberal talk and Liberal 
phraseology, and did not care to drop it. A number of 
nicknames had been fastened on Toryism with which 
people did not like to be pelted, and Lord Palmerston's 
attitude suited them down to the ground : reform on 
our lips, repose in our hearts ; reform in the abstract, 
and repose in the concrete : that was the thing which 
was wanted. Had Lord Palmerston been ten years 



THE CAVE. 123 

younger, the history of the last fifty years would have 
been widely different. 

It is necessary to look a little into what preceded 
the formation of the Cave if we are to understand its 
full significance. In the lately-published correspond- 
ence of the Earl of Lytton, there occurs a remarkable 
passage bearing on this period : " With what consum- 
mate abihty have the Whigs continued for generations 
to make the Radicals of all sorts their faithful and 
useful allies, while systematically keeping them out of 
power and in a position of political subserviency. If 
the Whigs had not, in their senility, committed the 
capital error of entrusting the leadership of their party 
to Gladstone, an outsider, and if he had had no per- 
sonal motive for betraying them to the Radicals, even 
now they would probably have remained the ruling 
power in England. I have no doubt it was a wise 
instinct of self-preservation which dictated the policy 
of making every Whig Cabinet a family party, and ad- 
mitting none but born Whigs to the higher offices. 
But the most wonderful tour de force is that in a genera- 
tion since 1831 they should have so long and so success- 
fully played the part of the popular party, the party 
instinctively supported by all the parvenus and roturiers, 
without surrendering an atom of their social exclu- 
siveness and family morgue. . . ." This is very true, 
yet it is not easy to see what alternative the Whigs 
had. They could not stand without the support of 
either the Tories or the Radicals. While Palmerston 
lived they had the support of the Tories ; but there was 
no one left to supply his place ; no one with the ex- 
quisite tact, popularity, and common-sense to play 
the same part. Lord John Russell had sunk below the 



124 TORY MEMORIES. 

horizon ; "he was invisible," said Lord Elcho, " to the 
naked eye." Who was there, then ? They were almost 
obliged to trust themselves to Gladstone in the hope 
that he would be able to manage the Radical wing. 
But the Radical wing managed him. They caught 
him, and never let him go again. 

The feeling of the country in the autumn of 1865 
was decidedly hostile to organic change, and but lan- 
guidly stirred by the alleged anomalies of the electoral 
system. The Whig section of the Liberal party were, 
in their hearts, opposed to any further reduction of the 
franchise, though they knew that from time to time 
some trifling concession to their Radical allies might 
be necessary. But beyond this it would do them no 
good. They had got under the existing system all they 
were ever likely to get ; they had more to lose than 
to gain by a Reform Bill. But it was otherwise with 
the Tories. They, under the existing system, seemed 
doomed to perpetual opposition, and the same prospect 
which made the Whigs reformers in the reign of George 
ly. reconciled the Tories to reform in the reign of Queen 
Victoria. From a purely party point of view they 
might have much to gain from a wide extension of the 
franchise. They could not well be worse off than they 
had been for the last twenty years. 

This was not, perhaps, a very lofty view of the 
situation for statesmen to adopt. But it gave them an 
excellent practical motive for supporting an extended 
suffrage of which the Whigs were destitute. What 
the Whigs, however, saw was that if a popular Reform 
Bill had really become inevitable, the Tories must not 
have the credit of it. The question, they thought, be- 
longed to themselves. Whatever popularity accrued 



THE CAVE. 125 

from it was?part of their political assets. But neither 
a Radical Reform Bill nor a Tory one would suit their 
book, and their object clearly was to take the Russell 
Reform Bill and mould it into a measure which should 
do themselves as little harm as possible. If the Govern- 
ment had accepted Lord Dunkellin's amendment, this is 
what they might have had. Had Gladstone been con- 
tent to tread in Lord Palmerston's footsteps, the Con- 
servative Whigs might have retained their supremacy 
for a long time. By continually throwing sops to Cer- 
berus they could have kept the seven-pounders in good 
humour. But by this time Mr. Gladstone, who had 
cut himself adrift from the Tories, was now equally 
determined not to serve again under the Whigs. He had 
had enough of that as Lord Palmerston's Chancellor 
of the Exchequer. Mr. Bright, who now had his ear, 
knew quite well that bit-by-bit reform, which was the 
game of the Whigs, was fatal to the Radicals. He saw 
that a rating franchise had an element of permanence 
in it which a rental franchise had not, and he acted ac- 
cordingly. Mr. Gladstone took his advice, and it was 
this, and not so much the Reform Bill of 1867, which 
" dished the Whigs." 

The Whigs, I have been told, saw their danger. But 
it would not have suited them to move in a body against 
the Russell Reform Bill. They must not appear at 
this critical moment the enemies of reform. But they 
continued, with their usual skill, to make it appear 
that the Conservatives were chiefly answerable for that 
opposition to the Government Bill which they had 
secretly encouraged themselves. It was necessary, how- 
ever, to give their followers a lead, and the heir of a 
great Whig house, a young man of known moderation. 



126 TORY MEMORIES. 

and generally respected^ was united with the son of a 
distinguished Tory peer in a combined attack upon a 
Bill in which the Whig supporters of the Government 
and even Whig members of the Administration dis- 
cerned too clearly the Radical influence under which 
Mr. Gladstone was acting. 

Such is a history of the famous " Cave " which 
created a degree of pubhc excitement in the spring of 
1866 greater, if I have been rightly informed, than even 
the Corn Law debate had ever aroused. 

I remember well being one of a large crowd who 
assembled in Westminster Hall, which was then open 
to the public, to hear the result of the division on Lord 
Grosvenor's amendment, to the effect that the House 
ought to be in possession of the whole Government 
scheme, including the distribution of seats, before the 
Franchise Bill was read a second time. The Bill 
proposed a ^7 rental franchise in the towns and ^14 
in the counties. If this Bill passed and the Act became 
law before the redistribution of seats was entered on, 
it was felt that the Government would have the House 
at their mercy. A General Election would bring the 
Government a large amount of support from the newly 
enfranchised constituencies, and, however objectionable 
their redistribution scheme, they might snap their fingers 
at the Opposition. This was felt very strongly in 1866, 
as it was again in 1885. In London generally the people 
were on the side of the Opposition, for everybody could 
see through the policy of the Government, and appre- 
ciate the advantage of treating reform as a whole and 
not by halves. But I think there was something more 
than this which influenced both " the man in the 
street " and the man in the slum. I remember people 



THE CAVE. 127 

talking about it as if it were a fair stand-up fight. Mr. 
Gladstone had " a probability of succeeding about 
him " which, as Sir Lucius O'Trigger says, " was mighty 
provoking." And I think many even of those who 
agreed with his general principles rather chuckled over 
the spectacle of his being " bearded in his den." At 
aU events, on that memorable morning, 3 a.m., April 
28th, the cheers in Westminster Hall when it was 
announced that the majority for Ministers was only five 
were loud and long. 

I was standing at the time beside a Gladstonian friend, 
who appeared to care nothing at all about the political 
situation, but was absorbed in its dramatic interest. 
It was doubtful to the last how the division would go. 
It was not, as has often been the case on similar occa- 
sions, a foregone conclusion, the only question being 
by what majority the victory would be gained. Here it 
was anybody's battle to the time when the bell rang. 
As it was, a majority so small was tantamount to a 
defeat, but Mr. Gladstone decided not to resign. The 
Radicals wanted their rental franchise, which they fore- 
saw could easily be lowered again as occasion offered, 
whereas a rating franchise represented a principle, and 
could less easily be broken down. They knew that if the 
question fell into the hands of the Tories they would 
propose a rating franchise, and this is what they after- 
wards did ; but, as it was necessary to get them out of 
office at the earliest possible moment, the Whigs lent 
the Radicals sufficient aid to enable them to defeat 
it, though by doing so they cut their own throats. 

The Russell Government having resigned on the car- 
riage of Lord Dunkellin's amendment, the third Derby 
Administration was formed, in the summer of 1866. All 



128 TORY MEMORIES. 

through that autumn and winter speculation was rife 
with regard to the probable policy of the new Ministry. 
Mr. Lowe's eloquent speeches against the Russell 
Reform BiU ; his warnings against democracy, " where 
every thistle is a forest tree," and his protests against 
the moral and social ill-effects of equality, had sunk 
deep into the minds of many thinking men who 
knew nothing about the Trojan horse. And there are 
not wanting even now those who believe that if Lord 
Derby had boldly taken his stand against further 
concessions to democracy he would have had such 
an amount of support from public opinion as might 
have given pause to any Liberal or Radical Ad- 
ministration whatsoever. Whether this attitude would 
have had the desired result or not it is now useless 
to inquire. But among other circumstances which 
influenced the Government in coming to a different 
decision, the Hyde Park riots were doubtless one, 
though their significance at the time was greatly 
over-rated. After the Park railings had been broken 
down and all the mischief done, the Life Guards came 
up into Piccadilly. But it was always said by the 
police that they could have repulsed the rioters by them- 
selves if the affair had been left to their own manage- 
ment. Why it was not I never understood. The result 
was disastrous, for it led to a beliei among the working 
classes that governments were to be intimidated by 
popular demonstrations, and, what was just as bad from 
a party point of view at the moment, it discredited 
the Tories, who were charged with weakness in having 
permitted such a mob triumph, though what justice 
there was for such a charge it is difficult to understand. 
It was in the autumn of 1866 that it occurred to an 



THE CAVE. 129 

enterprising journalist that in the existing state of parties 
an independent Conservative paper representing the 
views of the "Cave" would have a good chance of 
success. It was an excellent idea, and had the scheme 
been properly launched, it is probable that the Day 
might have taken a permanent place among the lead- 
ing journals of London. The projector consulted me, 
and asked me whether, if the paper were started, I 
would write the political articles. A certain amount of 
capital was promised by the friends of the proprietor, 
and it was hoped that the Cave would do the rest. 
The leading members of it were appealed to, and they 
all promised their confidence and their support. They 
also opened their purse strings, and continued to sub- 
sidise the new journal for some months, inspiring its 
leaders and giving us all those private " tips " which 
editors so highly prize. 

For some months I was in constant communication 
with Lord Elcho and Major Anson, a brother of Lord 
Lichfield, and I sometimes saw Lord Grosvenor, and 
also Mr. Spender, who was much interested in the paper. 
It had a great success at first, and Mr. W. H. Smith 
offered to take all that we could print. It was eagerly 
read, because it was the only organ of opinion through 
which the policy of the Cave could be ascertained, and 
during the debates on the Reform Bill in 1867, when 
any important division was impending, the columns of 
the Day were consulted to see which way the Cave would 
vote, as they sometimes held the issue in their hands. 
I used to go down to the House of Commons late at 
night to see Lord Elcho or one of his friends, and get 
my cue for next day's article, which I wrote in our office 
in Essex Street sometimes up to three o'clock in the 



130 TORY MEMORIES. 

morning, or even later. Of articles written in this ex- 
treme haste the less said about the style the better. But 
they seemed to go down with the public, and satisfied 
our supporters. The policy of the Cave was to sup- 
port the Conservative Reform Bill, though Mr. Lowe 
had shaken the dust off his feet against it. But they 
were all anxious to avoid saying anything disrespectful 
of Mr. Gladstone. I had my knuckles rapped severely 
on one occasion for venturing to compare him on some 
quite trifling occasion to the dog in the manger. The 
Cave men were gentlemen, and felt that one who had 
so recently been their leader was still entitled to their 
regard. Matthew Arnold, in his well-known dictum 
about sweetness and light, and the qualities of an 
aristocracy, especially mentioned Lord Elcho as an 
instance of what he meant by sweetness, and certainly 
he deserved the epithet, if any man ever did. Colonel 
Anson, too, was a very pleasant man, and I got on 
capitally with all of them, so long as the paper lasted. 
Unfortunately, there had been some misunderstanding 
with regard to the funds which the editor and proprietor 
had undertaken to provide, and when Lords Elcho, 
Grosvenor, and Lichfield found that this money was 
not forthcoming, they not unnaturally concluded that 
they had been deceived, and that their contributions 
had been obtained under false pretences. This was not 
the case. But perhaps the noblemen and gentlemen 
who had advanced considerable sums on the strength 
of these representations can hardly be blamed for with- 
drawing their support when they found that they had 
never rested on any solid foundation. 

This was a time of great activity among Parlia- 
mentary reformers. You might have thought that not 



THE CAVE. 131 

one but a dozen Abbe Sieyes had suddenly appeared 
in this island. We published some philosophical specu- 
lations on the subject from a Scotch professor — ^I think 
he was — which delighted a certain section of readers. 
I remember a clergyman rushing into the office one 
morning and crying out, like "Toad-in-the-Hole," " Ah ! 
this is what we want — this is what we have been waiting 
for ! " But it was not what the House of Commons was 
waiting for, and the speculators mourned over the stupid- 
ity of both political parties, who would not approach 
these questions in the spirit of Plato or Aristotle. 

I myself was much disappointed at the stoppage of 
the paper, and made the most strenuous efforts to 
avert it. It was not wholly on interested grounds that 
I did this, for I liked the work and the excitement, and 
the consciousness of playing a part in a great political 
movement, and I valued even more than this the 
acquaintance which I thus made with distinguished 
men and the confidence which they reposed in me. 
Still, the loss of twelve guineas a week was something ; 
and, putting aside for a time some other work on which 
I was engaged, I packed up my things and retreated 
to my father's parsonage in Leicestershire, there to 
ruminate on the mutability of human affairs, and to 
diversify this occupation by catching perch and roach 
in the brook, and at other times going to sleep in the 
long, cool grass. I had spent a happy time on the 
Day, and I shall always look back upon it with satis- 
faction. I had, nevertheless, the mortification to 
discover that half the people in Leicestershire, though 
much interested in the Reform question, had never so 
much as heard of the Day. Vervecum patria. Such is 
reputation ! 



CHAPTER XI. 

TORY LADIES. 

The Era of the Political Hostess — Lady Granville and the Rising Liberal 
Journalist — Lady Jeune's Receptions — Sir John Gorst and Lord 
Beaconsfield's Funeral — Sir Richard Webster — An Eminent Counsel 
on County Government — Reminiscences of Prince Charles Edward 
— Lady Ridley — A Sympathiser with Lord Iddesleigh — Lady Car- 
narvon — Lady Stanhope — Lady Salisbury — Lady Winifred Herbert 
—Mrs. St. John Brodrick. 

" She is the only good woman the Tories have," says 
one Whig member to another, talking of Lady Deloraine 
in " Sybil " in the year 1839. Those were the days in 
which the political lady was still a great personage ; 
not that she has yet lost all her original brightness, or 
all her original utility. But times have changed, and 
the class on whom her fascinations were chiefly exercised 
no longer possess sufficient political power to repay those 
sacrifices which, according to Lady St. Julian, were 
necessary to the kind of social bribery in which she and 
her sisters were proficients. 

The middle class, for more than a whole generation, 
held the fate of parties in their hands. The class above 
them was " in Society " already. The class below them 
had as yet no ambition to enter it. But between these 
came a numerous and powerful section of the com- 
munity, with plenty of money, and struggling for recogni- 
tion. To get into Parliament was the first step, and 
their votes were made the price of admission within 
the charmed circle. 

132 



TORY LADIES. 133 

Then, indeed, the political great lady, if possessed 
of the requisite tact and the necessary fascinations, 
could exercise considerable influence on the fortunes of 
the Party to whose interests she was attached. Loyalty 
to a pretty woman who took you by the hand, who 
coaxed you and flattered you, and made you feel for the 
moment not merely in Society, but of it, was not very 
difficult to secure ; and loyalty to the patroness meant, 
of course, fidelity to the party. Such was the important 
function discharged by " the great ladies " who, in spite 
of Disraeli's satire, were for a number of years a real 
power in politics. Even before it became necessary to 
lavish so much attention on the middle class, these 
seductive dames did good work, both in confirming the 
allegiance of friends and in sapping the allegiance of 
foes. There is still a wide field open to the influence of 
such attractions. As the middle-class members gradu- 
ally lost their importance, journalists and men of letters 
began to take their place. " In my time," says Major 
Pendennis, " poetry and genius and all that sort of thing 
were devilish disreputable. But the times are changed 
now — there's a run upon literature — clever fellows get 
into the best houses in town, be gad ! " 

But what was only beginning in Major Pendennis's 
time, has since his day become a recognised part of 
the social system. And many great ladies welcome to 
their drawing-rooms men who have made any name for 
themselves in literature, journalism, or art, quite as 
much, I think, with the view of doing honour to those 
professions as with any idea of enlisting advocates for 
their own political friends. " This is a neutral house," 
Raikes once said to me at Lady Stanhope's, as Sir WiUiam 
Harcourt stalked in, towering above the heads of some 



134 TORY MEMORIES. 

smaller Tory guests ; and I think nearly as much might 
be said of all the Tory drawing-rooms in which I ever 
found myself. Men of letters, however, were not to 
be had quite so readily as the middle-class member of 
Parliament described in " Sybil." And I remember 
very well when a well-known Liberal journalist who was 
just rising into repute received a card from Lady 
Granville, he at once threw it into the fire. " I don't 
know Lady Granville," he said, " and Lady Granville 
does not know me. What right has she to send me a 
card ? " He treated it as a piece of impertinence. 
The man, who was a friend of mine, and has since risen 
to great political eminence, perhaps carried his ideas 
of independence a little too far. And I have always 
thought that there was more false pride in refusing the 
invitation than there would have been humility in ac- 
cepting it. ' 

It is now nearly thirty years ago since I first met 
Lady St. Helier, then the Hon. Mrs. Stanley, the young 
and handsome widow of Colonel John Stanley, of the 
Guards, brother and heir-presumptive to the then Lord 
Stanley of Alderley. She was a very clever woman, and 
had by that time established her receptions in Wimpole 
Street on a recognised footing, and made them so agree- 
able that all the world of fashion, literature, and art 
flocked to her rooms, which were always crowded. She 
had very cathohc sympathies, and I first met her at 
dinner in Devonshire Street, at H. M. Hyndman's, who 
had not then developed into the full-blooded Socialist 
which he afterwards became, and was only known as a 
clever writer with strong Radical proclivities. I con- 
tinued to be on friendly terms with him for a long time. 
We belonged to the same club, and when Mr. Hyndman 



TORY LADIES. 135 

was compelled to leave it in consequence of the part he 
had taken in the Trafalgar Square riots, our windows 
were broken by his friends. However, all this was in the 
future. I sat next Mrs. Stanley at a well-appointed 
dinner-table which indicated no aversion to the in- 
equalities of Society or to the iniquities of prosperity. 
After dinner I rejoined her in the drawing-room, 
and the next morning I received an invitation to dine 
with her at a house she had taken in Putney for the 
summer. The other guests were Lady Tweeddale (Mrs. 
Stanley's sister), Mr. Edward Stanhope (then a member 
of the Disraeli Government), Mr. Theodore Walrond, 
and Mr. Hosack. After this we were usually asked to 
her receptions in Wimpole Street, which she afterwards 
exchanged for Harley Street. Here we met everybody : 
princes and princesses, statesmen, soldiers, authors, 
actors and actresses, making up a most novel and delight- 
ful medley. Here I remember, soon after the change 
of Government in 1880, seeing Mr. Cross and Lord Gran- 
ville in close conversation in a corner of the room, and 
being interested in overhearing Mr. Cross say to the 
Whig Foreign Secretary, " Oh, if the French say 
that, of course it's all right." Here I remember Miss 
Gertrude Kingston tripping up to me, just about the 
time when there was so much talk about thought-read- 
ing. " Oh," she said, " I've just been telling Sir Francis 
Jeune* (the judge of the Divorce Court) that his Court 
will soon have to be abohshed ; there'll be no further 
use for it. If people even wanted to do an5rthing wrong, 
they daren't think about it, for fear their thoughts 
should be discovered." " Oh, but, Miss Kingston," I 

* Mrs. Stanley married Sir Francis Jeune in 1881. He was created 
Lord St. Helier more than twenty years afterwards. 



136 TORY MEMORIES. 

said, " you never do think of doing anything wrong, 
I'm sure." Upon which, with a httle pout, she turned 
away. 

Miss Ellen Terry and her sister Marion, whom I 
knew very well, were often there. I saw very little 
of the former, but more of Marion, who was very 
pretty and very agreeable, and I had always a 
great opinion of her as a comic actress, though she 
ceased after a time to appear in such parts, and I don't 
know that she has ever resumed them. She lived at 
one time just opposite to our house, and dined with 
us more than once. I am here reminded that I came 
very suddenly one evening, on turning a corner, upon a 
lady whom I did not at first recognise. She was 
standing alone, with a settled melancholy on her 
countenance ; how changed from her whom I had often 
seen keep stalls, boxes, and gallery in a roar, and whose 
eyes, mouth, and chin brimmed over with humour : 
now she looked the picture of gloom ! It was Mrs. 
John Wood. 

Calling on Lady Jeune one Sunday afternoon, I 
found little Miss Norreys sitting alone with her, a quiet, 
ladylike young actress whom I had often admired on 
the stage. Somehow or other the names of Lord and 
Lady Beaconsfield came up, and with them the old joke 
about his marriage, already mentioned. I remember 
the girl asking with a pensive air and in a tone of great 
earnestness, " And did he marry for love ? " Poor 
thing ! she had, if I remember aright, a melancholy end 
— I hope not accelerated by any such secret sorrow as 
Viola described. 

Sir Stafford Northcote, who had known Lady Jeune 
from her childhood, was often at her house, and so, too. 



TORY LADIES. i37 

was Mr. Balfour. On one occasion, I remember, my wife 
sat just opposite to me next to Sir John Gorst, who 
took her in to dinner. She asked him whether he 
had been to Lord Beaconsfield's funeral. His answer 
was characteristic. " No," he said ; " I was not in- 
vited, and I am not one of those people who invite 
themselves." On another occasion, when I dined 
there, the Prince and Princess Christian were of the 
party, and after dinner I found myself sitting oppo- 
site Lord Carlingford and Dr. Smith, of the Quarterly 
Review, who began talking of Junius. They both pro- 
fessed themselves strong " Franciscans," as it was 
called. I ventured to interpose the remark that Lord 
Grenville was reported to have said that he knew who 
Junius was, and that it was not Francis. Lord Car- 
lingford, who was in trouble over his riband and his shirt 
collar, answered rather shortly that the statement was 
not so well-authenticated as I supposed ; and as I saw 
that he was very uncomfortable about the back of his 
neck, I forebore to ask him an5d:hing more. Mr. John 
Murray, whom I often met at Lady Jeune's, talked to 
me once a good deal about Junius, and showed me 
some autograph letters on the subject. He published a 
very able article in the Quarterly by Mr. Coulton, some 
time in the 'fifties, attacking the Franciscan theory, and 
putting forward Lord Lyttelton as the author of Junius. 
Lord Macaulay, who wrote a letter to Mr. Murray on 
the subject did, I think, show that Junius was not 
likely to have been Lyttelton, but he got no nearer any 
proof that he was Sir Philip Francis. Mr. Massey's 
History of England should be consulted on this question. 
In the drawing-room on the evening to which I 
have referred I was presented to the Princess Christian, 



138 TORY MEMORIES. 

who asked me a few questions about myself and my 
writings, which showed all the ready tact with which I 
suppose Royalty is born. The Prince, I remember, 
was much interested in the fact that I had met with 
an old acquaintance of his in the shape of a stable- 
man who used to be a rough-rider to the pack of 
hounds with which the Prince hunted in Hamjishire. 
" Oh, yes," he said, " I remember old Taylor well. 
What is he doing now ? " I told him he was foreman at 
a livery stable in South Kensington, and apparently 
doing pretty well. He seemed glad to hear about him. 

Lady Jeune's was a decidedly Tory house at this 
time, or — more properly — I should say Unionist. Mr. and 
Mrs. Chamberlain would be there, and Lord James of 
Hereford, and others of less note. But Toryism pre- 
dominated, and among the cheeriest of Tory members 
who frequented these lively gatherings was George 
Russell, whom I had known long before at Oxford, and 
who was now Sir George, and member for a division of 
Berkshire. He had the most joyous countenance of any 
man I ever knew, and it was impossible to be in low 
spirits for three minutes in his company. Marriott, who 
was much petted by the Tories after winning a doubtful 
seat at Brighton ; Mr. Mallock ; and last, but not least. 
Sir Richard Webster, come into my mind as I look back 
to those days. A friend of mine volunteered to put a 
legal question to Sir Richard, who, as might be ex- 
pected, evaded it with the usual reply of a lawyer. The 
question, I think, concerned the relation which would 
exist between the editor and the proprietors of a news- 
paper, supposing a deceased proprietor who was sole 
owner to have left the property to his natural represen- 
tatives, and the editorship to somebody else for life. 



TORY LADIES. 139 

Could the latter do as he hked with it : convert it from 
a Unionist to a Home Rule organ, no matter how much 
the sale might thereby be reduced ? The future Lord 
Chief Justice said he could not answer such a question 
offhand or without seeing the testator's will. 

Lord Rowton often came, and once when he was late 
I heard Lady Jeune ask him how many ties he had 
spoiled. Mr. Bouverie, too, who had then become 
thoroughly anti-Gladstonian, used to appear now and 
again, and I remember being one of a deputation ap- 
pointed by Lady Jeune to go and ask him why he 
shouldn't stand for Northampton, the seat being then 
vacant through the doings of Mr. Bradlaugh. It was 
seriously urged upon him that he was the man to do it, 
and save the seat from the Radicals. Mr. Bouverie 
smiled good-naturedly, and said he would think about it 
and see " whether it would wash." However, he came 
to the conclusion that the scheme was not a fast colour, 
and we heard no more of it. I think Greenwood was 
one of the deputation. He and Traill and Alfred 
Austin and myself, Lawson of the Telegraph, who came 
occasionally, and William Stebbing, of the Times, were, 
I think, the chief representatives of the Unionist Press 
in Lady Jeune's multifarious assemblies. But soldiers 
and sailors, ambassadors and princes, lawyers and 
authors, all passed through the rooms in turn. Sir 
James Knowles was usually in evidence at Lady Jeune's, 
and I met both Mr. MacmiUan and Mr. Prothero there 
occasionally. 

I think the last time I ever dined in Harley Street 
was at a small party on a Sunday. The Duke of Leeds 
was there and Colonel Saunderson, and Edward Pember, 
the well-known Parliamentary counsel, whom I had 



140 TORY MEMORIES. 

known for a long time. He began as an uncompromis- 
ing Tory and used to write for the Press. He then 
edged away to Liberahsm, but finally rejoined his 
old friends when Gladstonianism became too much for 
him. I remember hearing him speak strongly on the 
subject of the Tory County Government Bill of 1888, 
alleging that it was impossible for county business to be 
done better than it was at Quarter Sessions. " I have 
seen," he said, " a plain country gentleman deliver a long 
and complicated statement involving the study and 
mastery of a pile of documents, with a clearness and con- 
ciseness and knowledge of business which left nothing 
to be desired. And all this he did for nothing — a task 
which I wouldn't have undertaken myself for a fifty- 
guinea brief." 

Lady Jeune's Sunday afternoons were always very 
pleasant ; one was sure to see somebody worth 
seeing and hear something worth hearing. Once I 
found quite a family party there : Lady Jeune's two 
pretty daughters and their cousins, pretty girls also, 
though in a different style, the daughters of the 
present Lord Stanley of Alderley. Miss Madeleine Stanley 
(the present Mrs. St. John Brodrick) and Miss Dorothy 
Stanley (the present Mrs. Allhusen) were then quite 
young, and indeed I remember them as children. As 
they grew up they helped Lady Jeune to entertain her 
Sunday friends, and I had many pleasant conversations 
with both of them. 

In the summer of 1885 I think. Lady Jeune took a 
house near Manningtree, in Essex, and was kind enough 
to invite me to pass a night there, as I was staying in 
the neighbourhood. The two young ladies were then 
children interested in tame rabbits and such-like pets. 



TORY LADIES. 141 

but as I went away early the next morning I had no time 
to inspect their menagerie. In the evening after dinner 
Lady Jeune told us some interesting stories of the old 
Scotch Jacobites, one of which I introduced into an 
article in the Quarterly Review for October, 1899, under 
the title of " Studies of the 'Forty-five." As a genuine 
family tradition, I cannot help repeating it here. It 
was Lady Jeune's grandmother who could speak of 
her acquaintance with " Long Peg," the sobriquet by 
which a famous old Scotswoman was long known. 
As a young girl Peg had come to Brahan Castle with a 
message from the Prince, who was there on a visit to 
Lady Fortrose, the daughter-in-law of the attainted Earl 
of Seaforth, who had been " out " in " the 'Fifteen." 
Peggy was among the privileged few who were admitted 
by Lady Fortrose to peep at the Prince through the 
drawing-room door as he drank his coffee ; and she 
afterwards begged of her sympathetic hostess the 
coffee cup which he had used, and which no meaner 
lips were ever allowed to touch. Many years after- 
wards she obtained another relic from Mrs. Stewart 
Mackenzie, whose husband succeeded to the family 
estates in 1784, and was created Lord Seaforth in 
1797. This was an old green velvet cushion on which 
the Prince had rested his feet. It is needless to say 
that both precious relics were religiously preserved, and 
when Peg died early in the last century she desired that 
they might be buried with her. 

This is a Jacobite memory, but it is not out of place 

among Tory memories, and I have elsewhere in these 

pages recorded other traces of a creed which lingered 

longer in these islands than is commonly supposed. 

Lady Jeune — I never think of her as Lady St. 



142 TORY MEMORIES. 

Helier — was a " Tory lady " of the first class, quite 
equal, I should say, to Lady Deloraine, whom, oddly 
enough, in some accidental particulars she much re- 
sembles. During the last few years I have seen com- 
paratively httle of her — my increasing deafness has 
made me rather avoid Society than endeavour to keep 
up my acquaintance with it by the usual methods. 

It was at a dinner at Lady Jeune's that I first met 
Lady Ridley, then the wife of Sir Matthew Ridley, who 
became Secretary of State in 1895. She was a beau- 
tiful woman, and her receptions at Carlton House 
Terrace were among the most brilliant of the season. 
Her rooms were much larger than Lady Jeune's, and 
it was some time in the 'eighties when I first had the 
privilege of entering them. I continued to receive cards 
for them down to the date of her death, in 1899. 
Early in that year she had issued cards for the Wed- 
nesdays and Saturdays in March, and it was on the 
very morning of the first Wednesday that she found 
herself too ill to see company. The receptions were 
postponed, and never, alas ! resumed. It was in the 
summer, often late in July — for the season lasted longer 
then — that her rooms were more generally thrown open 
when I first knew her. She was a staunch " Tory 
lady," perhaps more so even than Lady Jeune, though 
neither she nor her husband came of a Tory family. Sir 
Matthew's father was the Whig member who in 1818 
proposed Mr. Wynn for the Speakership in opposition 
to the Tory candidate, Mr. Manners Sutton. And it 
was curious that, by the irony of fate. Sir Matthew 
himself, when Tory candidate for the chair in 1895, 
was opposed and defeated by the Liberal candidate, 
Mr. Gully. But there were no traces of these ante- 



TORY LADIES. i43 

cedents in the Carlton House Terrace of 1890. Lady 
Ridley's assemblies were less miscellaneous than Lady 
Jeune's. I don't remember seeing any actors or actresses 
there except Mr. and Mrs. Kendal, who were usually 
surrounded by an admiring throng, Mr. Kendal look- 
ing very proud of his wife. 

I remember meeting there a lady who was a great 
friend of Sir Stafford Northcote, on the night when it 
first became known that he was to leave the Foreign 
Office to make way for Lord Salisbury. Lord Iddes- 
leigh, as he then was, had by some accident seen the 
change announced in the newspapers before he re- 
ceived any notice of it from Lord Salisbury, then the 
head of the Government. This was in the month of 
January, 1887. The retirement of Lord Randolph 
Churchill from the Exchequer and Leadership of the 
House of Commons led to Mr. W. H. Smith being 
appointed Leader, and also First Lord of the Treasury, 
a post hitherto held by Lord Salisbury, who now felt 
it necessary to take the Foreign Office. There was great 
diversity of opinion with regard to the treatment of 
Lord Iddesleigh in this affair. He was the last man 
to complain, but he must have felt that scant considera- 
tion had been shown him. When in 1881 Sir Stafford 
Northcote had become Leader of the Opposition, Lord 
Randolph christened him " the Goat," and the bulk of 
the Tory Party who supported him shared the appel- 
lation. The Fourth Party, which consisted of seven- 
teen sheep and four shepherds, naturally held " the 
Goats " in great contempt, and it became one of their 
chief objects to hunt down the leader of the flock. 
At this time Mr. Balfour had ceased to be a member 
of the party. 



144 TORY MEMORIES. 

Whatever justification may have existed for these 
attacks, it is not to be supposed that the victim of them 
could have regarded with much complacency the eleva- 
tion of the chief promoter of them into his own place 
as Leader of the House, thereby seeming to give colour 
to all the charges which the Fourth Party had brought 
against him. His dismissal — for it came to that — from 
the Foreign Office was only the last straw, and the 
indignation of his friends was, I think, very natural. 
The Tory lady whom I met at Lady Ridley's stamped 
her little foot upon the ground, declaring it was the 
result of a disgraceful intrigue which had been brewing 
for years. I will not enter upon this question ; but I 
remember the excitement it created in Lady Ridley's 
drawing-room, where little groups of ladies and gentle- 
men more or less interested in politics stood about dis- 
cussing it. 

Lady Ridley, however, though a great political lady, 
aimed at something more than making her house the 
rendezvous of a party. I remember one occasion at the 
end of the season, and at the end of her last reception, 
when she did me the honour to take me aside and say 
that I had been so very good and so constant (in fact, 
I hadn't missed one of her parties — they were too good) 
that she hoped I would help her in her design of es- 
tablishing " a little salon." I placed myself entirely 
at her service, as anyone may suppose. But how 
Lady Ridley could have imagined it possible I could 
be of any service to her in carrying out such a 
project, I never could understand. I should doubt, 
indeed, whether such a thing was possible at that time 
in London, whatever allies she might have had. What 
Holland House may have been like once upon a time. 



TORY LADIES. 145 

I don't know, and have never met with anyone who did. 
Even Mr. Thackeray used to say, " I never saw a Whig, 
though I have often wished I was one." The Whig 
Party are said to have made the most of their social 
advantages. And their long monopoly of the Court in 
the eighteenth century had probably schooled the Whig 
ladies better than the Tory in all those arts and witch- 
eries essential to success in the pretty game they played. 
But if Holland House were revived to-morrow, would 
it have the kind of political influence which it had a 
hundred years ago ? Were another Lady Palmerston 
to rise out of the Whig ranks, could she, at this time of 
day, create another Cambridge House ? Would the 
" Labour Party " care for her smiles, or the Nationalists 
be disarmed by her allurements ? Before the great lady 
reappears who is to play this part over again, many 
other changes must happen, of which there are no signs 
as yet. 

Of Lady Carnarvon I have spoken in an earlier 
chapter. While Lord Carnarvon still lived she held re- 
ceptions in Portman Square, and I remember meeting 
there Mr. Rider Haggard. After her husband's death, she 
took a house in Charles Street, Berkeley Square, with 
smaller rooms, which I have seen as full as they could 
hold. But I think I saw more political notabilities at 
Lady Stanhope's. It was at Lady Stanhope's that I 
was for the first and only time in my life in the same 
room with Mr. Gladstone — that is, as far as I can 
recollect, for I think he must have been present some- 
times at other large parties. But on this occasion I 
was close to him. He was not speaking to anybody, 
but kept walking backwards and forwards in a corner 
of the room like a caged tiger, and, as I thought 

K 



146 TORY MEMORIES. 

at the moment, gnashing his teeth ! But I beheve he 
was only taking lozenges, or something of that kind 
— either for neuralgia or for his throat. 

At Lady Salisbury's receptions, whether in Arling- 
ton Street or at the Foreign Office, of course we met 
all the world. Lord Salisbury himself, who was gener- 
ally supposed to preserve a somewhat grave exterior, 
would at these parties sometimes indulge in hearty 
laughter. I remember Sir James Knowles amusing 
him very much about something, when he laughed all 
over — lips, legs, and arms. I used to meet here 
Musurus, whom I always liked, but Lord Salisbury didn't. 
He once told me that he thought the Turkish Am- 
bassador a very stupid man. I certainly never found 
him so ; for in his own house, when once squatted on 
the sofa and in for a talk, he was one of the most amus- 
ing men I ever came across. Lord Salisbury, however, 
may have found him slow at understanding the Turkish 
policy of the Government. But of this more presently. 
This was the only house, I think, at which I ever met 
the late Lord Stanley of Alderley, of whom likewise 
I shall have more to say hereafter. His deafness made 
him averse to general society. But he used to come to 
Lord Salisbury's, and it was good to stand next to him 
at a party of that kind. His remarks were usually of a 
very original character. Sir Theodore and Lady Martin 
I have seen at Arlington Street. Sir Theodore and 
Professor Aytoun were two pillars of Tor5nsm, and Lady 
Martin herself was a most gracious hostess. She had 
finally retired from the stage at the time I am speaking 
of. But it was not long before that she said to a 
friend of mine : " If you'U find a Romeo, I'U find a 
Juliet." But I don't think she ever did. 



TORY LADIES. i47 

The last time I saw her was at the unveiUng of Sir 
Walter Scott's bust in Westminster Abbey by the Duke 
of Buccleuch. I walked away from the Abbey with 
Mr. Balfour, who, referring to what he had said in 
his speech about Byron and Richardson, asked me 
whether I was a disciple of the Lake School, or words 
to that effect. I in turn asked him whether he thought 
Macaulay was right in saying that Byron was the in- 
terpreter of the Lake School to the general pubhc, 
adding that I thought nobody would ever have really 
understood Wordsworth any the better by reading 
Byron. If I remember aright, he said he thought 
so, too. 

The Duchess of Rutland was at home on Sunday 
afternoons at Cambridge Gate. I used to go there 
when I could, for the Duchess was very nice to talk to, 
and there was httle Lady Victoria, too, as amusing as 
she had been at Belvoir. " Here's a gentleman," said 
the Duke, " who says he remembers you at Belvoir." 
" Oh, does he ? " was the tart reply of the young lady, 
in a tone of decided contempt. 

Of Lady Winifred Herbert, who married first Cap- 
tain Byng, and afterwards Herbert Gardiner, now Lord 
Burghclere, I saw very little after her marriage. A 
good many years had elapsed when I went to a party 
at her house, when she greeted me with the exclama- 
tion, " Why, you are quite an apparition ! " But my 
lamp of memory is burning very low now, and when I 
have paid my respects to Mrs. St. John Brodrick I 
must take my leave of ladies' society for a while. Mrs. 
Brodrick, soon after her marriage, used to receive in 
Portland Place, and her rooms used to fiU well. As 
the very pretty young wife of a Tory Cabinet Minister, 



148 TORY MEMORIES. 

she was naturally a favourite with the party ; but I 
had known her so long that we talked rather about 
people and books than about politics. It was in Port- 
land Place, too, that I last saw Mrs. AUhusen. This 
was just before the last General Election, in the winter 
of 1906. Mr. AUhusen was then sitting member for 
Hackney, and they had taken a house, so his wife told 
me, in that quarter of the town to facilitate canvassing. 
But if a Helen had come to the rescue nothing could 
have averted the torrent of Radicalism which then 
swept over England. Mr. AUhusen was defeated by 
Mr. Spicer, though only by a small majority of about 
600. A hke disappointment befel her sister, for Mr. 
St. John Brodrick lost his seat for the Guildford Division 
to Mr. Cowan. 




To face page 148. 



/ /twt^l^^l. 



CHAPTER XII. 

TORY ARCADIA.* 

The Halfords — Wistow — Sir Robert Peel's Frigidity — The Old 
Duke of Cambridge — His Dialogue with a Curate — Likened to 
the Hippopotamus — A Question of Clerical Etiquette — Sir Henry 
Halford, the Physician — Could the Duke of York have Prevented 
the Revolution of 1828-32 ? — The Second Sir Henry Halford — 
The Last of the Chanticleers — His Love for the Classics — The 
Family becomes Extinct — The New Poor Law — A Hunt Break- 
fast at Quorn — Boys and Port Wine^The Economics of County 
Influence — Parsons of Arcadia — Eccentrics. 

The following are all personal experiences relating to 
rural conditions, such as they were before the days 
of Mr. Arch and agricultural depression. I was brought 
up on terms of great intimacy with the Halford 
family, f We lived at Kilby, a village about a mile from 
Wistow, and the same distance from Newton Harcourt, 
where in the lifetime of the old physician, Mr. and 
Mrs. Halford hved. My father was vicar of the three 
parishes. But there was no village at Wistow. There 
had been one in former days, and part of the land on 
which it once stood is covered by a fine piece of water 
lying just below the Hall, which stands upon a rising 
ground and is approached through an avenue of im- 
memorial elms. 

The Halfords were a strictly Tory family. The 

* Some few anecdotes in the earlier part of this chapter are repub- 
lished, with Mr. John Murray's permission, from the Quarterly Review. 
•f See post, pp. 157-160. 

149 



150 TORY MEMORIES. 

estate v/as left by the last baronet of the old line. 
Sir Charles Halford, who died in 1780, to the de- 
scendants of Ehzabeth Halford, who, in the middle 
of the eighteenth century, married a Leicester alderman 
whose daughter in turn married Dr. James Vaughan, 
a physician of great repute in the town of Leicester. 
Thus his eldest son, at the death of Sir Charles's 
widow — who, after her husband's death, married Lord 
Denbigh — came into the Wistow property. He had 
previously been created a baronet by George IH., and 
he now took the name, and became Sir Henry Halford 
of Wistow, the first of a new line of baronets. He 
was very successful in his profession, and enjoyed for 
many years a highly lucrative practice. He has been 
called the Chesterfield of physicians. That he owed 
something to his courtly manners — partly natural to him, 
but improved by his long acquaintance with the Court, 
and by the wide practice among the aristocracy which 
the Court physician to four sovereigns in succession was 
certain to command — is likely enough. So popular was 
he with William IV. that Lady Jersey told my father 
in 1836, when he asked her to try to bring some little 
publication before the notice of the King, that he 
could have no better introduction than Sir Henry's. 
"You have Sir Henry Halford," she said; "you have 
only to mention his name and the Palace gates will 
fly open." 

It is needless to say that Sir Henry was a Tory of 
the Tories, and he represented the old school in more 
ways than one. His dress was of the date of the Regency. 
He wore powder in his hair, short nankeen trousers in 
summer, and usually a snuff-coloured coat. His house, 
too, has every right to be celebrated in Tory memories. 



TORY ARCADIA. 151 

Sir Richard Halford, in the seventeenth century, was 
at the head of the Tory interest in South Leicestershire, 
and Charles I.'s manager. The King himself slept at 
Wistow before the battle of Naseby, of which the 
scene is some ten or twelve miles distant ; and though 
the Hall has since been enlarged, his room has been 
carefully preserved, and I myself have had the honour 
of sleeping in it. A saddle, spurs, and a sword which 
he left behind were carefully preserved at Wistow ; 
and, in fact, the house was redolent of Toryism. Sir 
Henry married a daughter of Lord St. John of 
Bletsoe, a lady who had known Mr. Pitt. On one 
occasion when she sat down to play chess with a 
visitor she said, " Ah, I once used to play chess with 
a very great man," and it was always assumed that 
she meant Mr. Pitt. I can just recollect her, and no 
more. 

Sir Henry was a great whist player, and so was my 
father — players, that is, of the old school, but very good 
both of them, as men played then at the most scientific 
tables. The baronet and the parson knew each other's 
game, and each was hard to beat when they got together, 
and during Sir Henry's stay at Wistow my father was 
usually at the Hall one evening a week at the least. He 
was always invited to meet any distinguished company 
whom Sir Henry entertained at Wistow. Sir Robert 
Peel came there once ; and the old Duke of Cambridge, 
father of his late Royal Highness the Commander-in- 
Chief. Of Sir Robert Peel my father's accounts always 
reminded me of the " Chicken's " description of Dombey : 
" he was as stiff a cove as ever he see " ; but that, 
nevertheless, "it was within the resources of science to 
double him up." Lord Beaconsfield, who did double him 



152 TORY MEMORIES. 

up, has noticed in the Life of Lord George Bentinck 
the defects of manner under which Peel laboured. 
" Sir Robert Peel had a bad manner, of which he 
was conscious ; he was by nature very shy, but 
forced early in life into eminent positions, he had 
formed an artificial manner, haughtily stiff or oppres- 
sively bland, of which, generally speaking, he could 
not divest himself." My father, who was himself the 
most genial of mankind, was struck by the frigidity 
of the great man, and the distance he observed to- 
wards the guests who had been invited to meet him. 
Unlike Sir Robert Walpole, he was, except in the com- 
pany of two or three very intimate friends, seen to less 
advantage in his " social hour " than at any other 
time. 

A very different man indeed was the old Duke, who 
came to Wistow, I think, several times, and my father 
met him at dinner more than once. He dined there one 
Sunday, when, I think, there was no other guest. This 
was long after Lady Halford's death, when Sir Henry's 
niece. Miss Vaughan, sat at the head of his table. The 
Duke, in a good-humoured, jolly way, expressed his 
surprise to his hostess that there was no roast beef and 
plum pudding on the table. " Why," he said, " when 
I dine with my sister Molly on Sunday, we always have 
roast beef and plum pudding." One day, soon after this, 
the curate of a neighbouring parish was asked to meet 
his Royal Highness. He was a man of good family, and 
very popular in the neighbourhood, and the Duke's 
idea of a clergyman's occupations did not apparently 
embrace much pastoral duty. After dinner he began a 
conversation with him in an easy, friendly manner. 
" And what are your pursuits, sir ? Do you hunt. 



TORY ARCADIA. 153 

sir ? " " No, sir." " Ah, then, you shoot, I suppose ? " 
" No, sir." " H'm, a fisherman, eh ? " " No, sir ; I 
don't care much for fishing." Tlae Duke was puzzled. 
" You read a good deal — perhaps a scholar, eh ? " " No, 
sir ; I'm afraid I'm no great reader." " Then what the 
devil do you do ? " 

The Duke's eccentricities are well known. In 
church, when he repeated the verse in the Psalms, " Why 
hop ye so, ye high hills ? " he thought it necessary to 
stoop down and teU Sir Henry's grandson, then a boy 
of eleven or twelve years of age, that " the thing was 
impossible." He was generally known in his later years 
as the good duke, for no other reason, it would seem, 
than because he was always good-natured and always 
willing to preside at public dinners, or discharge any 
other functions which required the presence of Royalty. 
A witty Oxford undergraduate wrote a paper, which 
Dickens published in Household Words, called " The 
Good Hippopotamus," showing that a grateful public 
were bound to recognise in this animal the same social 
virtues which pleased them so greatly in the Duke. 
The public could come and see him eat and bathe and 
show himself generally for their amusement, and what 
did the Duke do more ? It was not meant for a spiteful 
satire, nor was it ever taken as such ; and the Duke 
himself, if he ever saw it, probably had a hearty laugh 
over it. The housemaids at Wistow, when they went 
about their work in the morning, used to hear his Royal 
Highness praying most fervently, as the reapers reap- 
ing early heard the Lady of Shalott. 

It would be curious if what I am now going to men- 
tion was due to any dim tradition of eighteenth-century 
Toryism, when the country gentlemen didn't care 



154 TORY MEMORIES. 

much about the Bishops, who were generally Whigs, 
while the country clergy were most of them staunch 
Tories. The Tory fox-hunter in the Freeholder tells 
Addison that his own county is a very happy one : 
" there's not a single Presbyterian in it except the 
Bishop." Now it so happened that one day, when Bishop 
Blomfield was a guest at Wistow, my father was asked 
to dine, and before they sat down Sir Henry called on 
my father as vicar of the parish to say grace, upon 
which the Bishop immediately jumped up and said it 
himself. Sir Henry, one would think, must have been 
perfectly well acquainted with clerical etiquette in 
such matters, and Bishop Blomfield was not the man to 
have committed what, unless he was strictly in order, 
would have been an act of great rudeness. 

The old physician's Toryism showed itself in another 
way. In the parish of Kilby, and partially in that 
of Newton, he made my father his representative, with 
the result that a kind of paternal government prevailed 
in these villages during my father's lifetime. His 
word was law. But as he very seldom used a hard one, 
the villagers reposed easily under the mild sway of 
one who thoroughly understood them, and whom they 
themselves understood. As a magistrate, he was said 
to err too much on the side of leniency, and one rather 
notorious character in the neighbourhood said he always 
liked to go before " the old gentleman as drove the white 
pony." He was a Tory of that time when, notwith- 
standing the disturbances on the Continent, and some 
riots and conspiracies at home, England, on the whole, 
reposed peacefully under the shadow of the old Con- 
stitution, which, whatever its faults, rested on a solid 
principle, and seemed for many years unlikely to be 



TORY ARCADIA. 155 

shaken by anything that could happen. Sir WiUiam 
Heathcote, writing to a friend in the year 1826, speaks 
of " the political agitation^ which, partly from the 
circumstances of the times, partly from the course of 
legislation, conducted with no conceivable object, as 
far as I can make out, except to produce this very 
result, now pervades and poisons the ordinary current 
of everyday life in a manner of which our young days 
afforded no example, and which makes life in England 
necessarily more or less miserable, at least to a person of 
my temperament, opinions, and prejudices." The repeal 
of the Test and Corporation Acts, followed by Roman 
Catholic Emancipation, came like claps of thunder in 
a clear sky. During the whole of Lord Liverpool's 
Administration, the upper and middle classes of English 
society enjoyed a feeling of security to which they have 
since been strangers. Then, says Disraeh, " all was 
blooming, sunshine and odour ; not a breeze disturbed 
the meridian splendour." But the very silence might 
have been thought ominous. With the measures I have 
named, and the Reform Bill which followed, the old 
Constitution fell and buried under its ruirs the old 
Torpsm in which my father and his old friend. Sir 
Henry, had been bred. 

I was too young to feel anything even of the ground 
swell after the great storm ; but as I grew older and 
heard my father talk of it, I began to understand the 
shock which the Revolution of 1828-32 must have been 
to the great body of the clergy and gentry who experi- 
enced it. It seems to have been commonly believed 
by them that if the Duke of York had lived, no such 
revolution would have occurred ; and no doubt if the 
Romish disabihties had not been repealed, the nomina- 



156 TORY MEMORIES. 

tion boroughs would not have been abohshed. Mr. 
Disraeh has said that the Duke of WeUington " preci- 
pitated a revolution which might have been delayed for 
half a century, and never need have occurred at all in 
so aggravated a form." My father and mother used to 
talk as if they partly believed this, and thought that 
any attempt at Roman Catholic Emancipation with 
the Duke of York upon the throne would have been met 
as it was in 1806. The Tories of that date had not yet 
been educated by the Oxford movement. The Toryism 
of such men as Hurrell Froude would have been as a 
strange language to them. They were, or they had 
been brought up to be, strongly anti-Romanist. They 
said that Mr. Pitt, who had first proposed Emanci- 
pation, had afterwards repented, and could not be 
quoted against them. Such was their reading of 
history. 

My father and mother, in 183 1, were staying with the 
Farnhams at Quorn, a village in North Leicestershire 
about two miles from Loughborough, and only seventeen 
from Nottingham. They were there when Nottingham 
Castle was burned by the rioters, and Mrs. Musters was 
driven from her house at Colwich — which was likewise 
fired by the mob — and compelled to take refuge in the 
adjoining shrubberies at the cost of her life through ex- 
posure to the cold. The alarm spread far beyond Not- 
tingham, and I have often heard my father tell how they 
sat up all night at Quorn in hourly dread of a similar 
attack, as both Mr. Musters and Mr. Farnham (my god- 
father, by the bye) were well-known Tories. It is not 
surprising that the impression made on men's minds 
by such events as these and the pohcy to which they 
were attributed should have been deep and permanent ; 



TORY ARCADIA. 157 

nor was it likely to be effaced by the legislation which 
immediately followed. 

Mr. Halford, Sir Henry's eldest son, was returned 
for South Leicestershire to the first reformed Parlia- 
ment, a seat which he held for twenty-five years, when 
he was succeeded by Lord Curzon. He early showed 
himself entitled to the name of Tory in its best sense 
by taking up the cause of the working classes in his own 
county. The mantle of Mr. Sadler had fallen on him, 
and he led the attack on the Truck system with great 
persistency till the cause was finally taken up by Lord 
Ashley. But that it was ever taken up at all was in 
great measure due to Mr. Halford. His father died when 
I was almost a child ; but the son, the second Sir Henry, 
I remember well. He was a well-read man, a good 
classical scholar, and had a great fund of humour. He 
is said to have been the last of the chanticleers in the 
House of Commons. He could crow better than any 
man in the House when it was thought desirable either 
to deride a Ministerial speaker or stop a Parhamentary 
bore. This talent naturally endeared him very much 
to the Tory benches ; but the reformed House of 
Commons gradually became too respectable to appre- 
ciate this fine natural gift at its proper value ; and it 
soon fell into disuse, so much so that I have heard my 
father say it was doubtful if a single cock was to be 
found in the House of Commons ten years after the 
Reform BiU. I feel it a great privilege to have person- 
ally known the last specimen of this extinct species. 

When he had given up crowing, this excellent Tory 
gentleman returned, like Lord Grenville, to his classics. 
He had a very good memory, and was very ready with 
his applications. I remember when I had gone out 



158 TORY MEMORIES. 

to look for a boy who had been sent to a neighbouring 
railway station, and whose delay in returning led us to 
beheve that he might have been hindered by the floods, 
which were out that morning, I met Sir Henry out 
walking, and told him what I was about. " Oh," said 
he, with a twinkle in his eye, " perhaps he is waiting on 
the other side of the brook till they go down : Rusticus 
expectat, eh ? " And he was so pleased with himself for 
this happy application of Horace that he walked away 
chuckling, quite forgetting aU about the boy. Another 
time, when an elderly friend after dinner, bewailing the 
degeneracy of the age, exclaimed rather theatrically : 
' Hei mihi / prceteritos referat si Jupiter annos' Sir 
Henry was at once down upon him, " Oh, don't say 
that," he cried : " ' Canitiem galea premimus.' " ' 

Sir Henry was a man of quick temper, and I never 
shall forget him one day when I was dining at Wistow, 
nobody else being present but he and Lady Halford, 
and John Halford, then an undergraduate of Trinity, 
Cambridge, to which seat of learning he was about to 
return the next day. Sir Henry had given him a cheque 
for his quarter's allowance that morning ; and John, 
being in want of change, had sent the groom off on horse- 
back to cash the cheque for him at Leicester, without 
saying anything to his father about it. During dinner 
something led to the errand being mentioned on which 
the groom had been dispatched, and as it was then 
getting late and the man had not returned. Sir Henry 
was very angry with his son for sending him to Leicester 
with such a sum of money. Time went on, and still no 
mention of the messenger ; and when one of the servants 
came into the room, John Halford asked him again 
whether the man had come back. " No, sir," was the 



TORY ARCADIA. 159 

answer. " No," cried Sir Henry, " of course not. You 
don't expect him to come back, do you ? With sixty 
pounds in his pocket and a good horse under him, of 
course he won't. He's a fool if he does." This was said 
while the footmen were waiting in the room to hear this 
estimate of their fellow-servant, who, it is almost need- 
less to add, was a perfectly honest man and retmrned 
with the money safe enough half an hour after he had 
been called a fool if he did. 

Sir Henry, however, was a good landlord and lenient 
to poachers, a subject of frequent complaint with the 
old gamekeeper, John Widdowson, who had watched 
over the Wistow game with parental solicitude for more 
than thirty years. Wistow was famous for its hares 
in those days, and when at a coursing meeting, to which 
the tenants and their friends were invited once a year, 
more than twenty hares were killed, it is on record that 
the good old man was moved to tears. 

The next baronet, the famous rifle-shot and my own 
contemporary and playfellow, was made of different 
metal. He was a keen sportsman, and managed to have 
both pheasants and foxes at Wistow. He was a first- 
rate rider to hounds, " a Tory fox-hunter " such as it 
never entered Addison's head to conceive of. I spent 
a couple of days with him at Wistow a few years ago, 
and we had a two days' pheasant shooting on my 
native soil, every inch of which I could almost have 
walked over blindfolded. Agricultural depression had 
fallen heavily on this good old Tory family. Sir Henry, 
at the time I refer to, had been obliged to give up his 
hunters and reduce his establishment. He had then no 
regular keeper, but was able to show us some pheasants 
in the small plantations round about the Hall where. 



i6o TORY MEMORIES. 

fifty years before, I used to go bird's-nesting. When I 
took leave of him I think he was about to go abroad, 
and I never saw him again. He died in January, 1897. 
His younger brother, a clergyman, succeeded to the 
baronetcy, but not to the estates, which went to the 
present Lord Cottesloe, who was one of the shooting 
party already mentioned. 

It is remarkable in what quick succession the last 
surviving members of the Halford family passed away. 
Lady Halford survived her husband only a few months ; 
Sir John Halford, who succeeded my father in the 
family living, which he afterwards exchanged for Brix- 
worth in Northamptonshire, died in April, 1897; and 
Mrs. Pell, Sir Henry's sister, died in 1904. None 
of the three children left any issue, and their places 
know them no more. My father, who was vicar nearly 
sixty years, knew three generations of this family, 
and now both our names are gradually fading away 
from the memory of the villagers. As I remember them, 
when my father was in full health and strength, and 
the Halfords were undepressed by the spectacle of unlet 
farms, they were all very favourable specimens, I think, 
of English rural life. They were governed by Tory prin- 
ciples, and seemed to flourish on them. 

Of my father, I may here say that he was in- 
tended for the law ; but, abandoning that profession, 
he went up to Cambridge very early in the nineteenth 
century, and he perfectly well remembered Lord 
Palmerston, who was at Cambridge at the same time, 
taking assiduous notes at the public lectures. While 
living in the Temple before he went to Cambridge, 
he heard Burke speak in the Warren Hastings trial, 
but could only remember that he thought him 



TORY ARCADIA. i6i 

rather a common-looking man. Of Sheridan he 
remembered nothing but his nose. He was fond of 
talking of those years, and knew the name of every 
judge upon the Bench during the time that he lived 
in the Temple. He served in a corps of Volunteers, 
though not the Devil's Own, and could tell amusing 
stories of what happened when they were called out 
to suppress a riot, the mob, I believe, having some 
special grudge against the cheesemongers, some of 
whose shops were looted. The Volunteers, however, 
were not very well drilled, and more than one of 
them received bayonet wounds from his rear-rank 
man. My father was also a great theatre-goer, and 
was fond of boasting of the many nights running he 
had gone to see Mrs. Siddons. Many years afterwards 
he found a congenial spirit in the Dean of Bangor, 
Dr. Cotton, who on one occasion borrowed my father's 
hat to go to the theatre, as he did not like to go there 
in his own. My father was staying at a friend's house, 
where the Dean happened to be dining, and as he didn't 
want to go to the theatre himself, he could spare his 
hat. I, too, remember this old Dean of Bangor very 
well, a most cheerful and humorous old gentleman 
and a good scholar. I recollect his desiring me, when 
a schoolboy, to replenish the fire in the words 
of Horace. 

When my father went into the Church, he held a 
curacy under Dr. Rhudd, of East Bergholt in Suffolk. 
Dr. Rhudd was a Tory of the Tories, and in his society 
my father's political principles, already founded on a 
warm appreciation of Mr. Pitt, received their finishing 
touch. The Doctor's High Churchmanship took the 
form of intense dislike for Calvinism, and his curate 



i62 TORY MEMORIES. 

imbibed the same horror of that austere creed. Except 
this article of faith, I think, he bequeathed him nothing 
except his walking-stick, which is now in my possession, 
black with age. The last time I was in the neighbour- 
hood I paid a visit to Bergholt, and inspected the 
parish register in the church. There I found my 
father's signature for the years 1809-1811, I think, in 
the well-known hand which never varied till he was 
turned eighty, when his eyesight began to fail him. 

He once told me that when he first came into 
Leicestershire there was only service at the parish 
church of Kilby, before Newton Chapel was built. The 
Wistow servants would sometimes go to church at 
Kibworth, a village about three miles off. To get there 
they had to cross a tiny little stream which ran across 
the road, and could generally be easily stepped across. 
After a heavy rain, however, it would sometimes become 
quite a little brook, and the housemaids from the Hall 
thought nothing of taking off their shoes and stockings 
and wading through it bare-legged — a relic of ancient 
simplicity dear, of course, to the Tory mind. 

One of my early recollections is of being taken to 
a hunt breakfast, which I regard to some extent as a 
Tory, or at least a Conservative institution. But I am 
sorry to say I was dreadfully bored by it. I was then 
only about eleven years old, and my father would not 
hear of my being put on the back of a hunter, so I rode 
in the carriage with the ladies. After the breakfast, 
where I knew nobody, we drove about from point to 
point to see what could be seen of the hounds, and 
every now and then came upon them crossing a road 
and the men jumping their horses in and out of it, believ- 
ing themselves to be bewitching the ladies with noble 



TORY ARCADIA. 163 

horsemanship. I remember one gentleman well on ac- 
count of the melancholy end which overtook him. He 
rode up alongside of the carriage and talked to its occu- 
pants for a few minutes, and then, saying that he was 
going to show off, put his horse at the adjoining fence. 
He was a captain in some cavalry regiment, which 
he afterwards commanded, and was so cut to the 
heart by their behaviour in one of the great Indian 
battles that he put an end to his life. 

" I have known men," says Thackeray, " who took a 
horrid delight in making boys drunk." I never encoun- 
tered a monster of this kind myself, but I do remember 
when boys were rather encouraged to drink wine, and 
taught to consider it a manly thing to be able to bear a 
good deal. I was not brought up in this way. My father 
was a remarkably abstemious man, and very little wine 
was drunk at our table when I was a boy. But there 
is an association of ideas between port wine and Tory 
politics which I have no wish to dispel, and, as an illus- 
tration of it, I remember my godmother, a most un- 
impeachable Tory female, stirring up my youthful ambi- 
tion by telling me she knew of a boy not older than myself 
who could drink his six glasses of " port wine and be as 
steady as a jug after it." These were her very words. 
She said " jug," mind, not " judge." Having thus 
briefly intimated to me in which direction the path 
of honour lay, she dropped the subject and left her 
words, and the look of scorn with which they were 
accompanied, to fructify in my bosom. The seed was 
sown in a not unkindly soil, and though choked for a 
time by sponge cakes, figs, and raisins, it eventually 
came up, and I still continue to prefer port to any other 
wine that can be offered to me. 



i64 TORY MEMORIES. 

Among other Tory gentry who adorned what I have 
fondly called Tory Arcadia, I remember Sir Arthur 
Hazelrigge, the descendant of an old family attached 
to the Parliamentary party, as the Halfords were to the 
Royalists. In fact, his ancestor was the well-known 
general of that name, who commanded a regiment of 
cavalry under Cromwell. But " he bore no traces of 
the sable strain." He was an ideal country gentleman 
and landlord, a sound Churchman, and a good Tory, 
beloved and revered by all his numerous tenantry. But 
he, too, had suffered from the depreciation of agricul- 
ture, which, indeed, has had a far-reaching effect, not, 
perhaps, anticipated a quarter of a century ago. It is 
not only in pocket that the country gentlemen have 
suffered. The lean years which reduced their incomes 
inevitably diminished their influence. Wealth and 
power and privilege may not be the highest deities to 
which the human mind can do homage, but they always 
have commanded it since the world began, and probably 
always will. With the loss of half his rentals, the 
country gentleman's hospitalities, charities, and general 
amenities were necessarily curtailed. With half his 
farms unoccupied, he lost a number of adherents, through 
whom his influence permeated the whole body of agri- 
cultural peasantry. He could no longer make the same 
figure in the county ; he was no longer among the best 
customers of the tradesmen in his county town. With 
the passage of the County Government Bill of 1888 he 
was shorn of much of that jurisdiction which he exer- 
cised so beneficially, and which, of course, added to his 
importance. His position was no longer one to exer- 
cise that unconscious influence on the imagination of 
the rural population which the presence of a resident 



TORY ARCADIA. 165 

aristocracy, with all its hereditary prerogatives, its 
antiquity, and its splendour is calculated to exert. 

In a word, in too many English counties the spell 
was broken, and it is my firm conviction that it is this 
more than anjrthing else which has caused so many 
English counties to exchange their old Tory representa- 
tives for Liberals. If it is said that the change is due 
simply to the fact that the country gentlemen can no 
longer practise any kind of compulsion, moral or material, 
on the newly-enfranchised voters, I stoutly deny it. 
This, of course, has had its share in producing the result, 
but only a small share. Had the landed proprietors 
in 1885 been what they were twenty years earlier, had 
there been no agricultural depression and no material 
change in the social and political position of the 
gentry, had the Hall and the Manor House still been 
kept up as of old, I don't believe that the enfranchise- 
ment of the peasantry, or an5rthing which contributed to 
give them greater independence, would have severed the 
tie which had so long bound together the owners and 
cultivators of the soil in bonds of mutual goodwill, loy- 
alty, and respect. But events have been otherwise shaped, 
the old proprietors have lost their hold over both tenants 
and labourers, and Tory Arcadia as it really once existed, 
though opinions may differ as to the exact date when it 
began to disappear, is, I fear, a dream of the past. 

Mr. Froude anticipates the time when England may 
have lost her Empire and her commerce, and have 
become a nation of shepherds and herdsmen. Should 
that time ever come, Arcadia may in one sense return. 
But not as Lord Beaconsfield so eloquently said in 1864, 
not "the old England." The word "Arcadia" is not 
to be taken too seriously. I have not used it in 



1 66 TORY MEMORIES. 

the present chapter to denote a kind of golden age, 
such as is said to have existed in the rural districts 
in the reign of Anne ; but rather as a short way of 
describing a time when between the different classes 
of the rural population there was no serious antagon- 
ism — when the peasantry were contented with village 
life, and farmer and labourer alike regarded their 
landlords, if sometimes with hostility, never with 
jealousy, or with any idea of ever stepping into their 
places. But perhaps the change, after all, has not been 
so great, and may not be so permanent, as is here sug- 
gested. And, indeed, I believe there are some English 
counties in which the old ties which once united all 
classes of the rural population are still unbroken. 

The picture, however, would not be complete without 
a word or two of the Rector and Vicar who inhabited this 
pleasant land. I can confirm from my own memory 
what Mr. Froude has said of an earlier generation of 
country clergymen. What they were in the reign of 
George IV., that they continued to be in the reign of 
William, and down to a late period in the reign of his 
successor. These clergymen were Tories to a man, all 
belonging more or less to the high and dry school, slightly 
moistened in some instances, either by an infusion of 
Waverley romance, or by some percolating element of 
the earlier Oxford revival, which was beginning slowly 
to make itself felt among the parochial clergy in general. 
I don't mean to say that what I remember to have heard 
and seen among the clergy in question was said and 
done exclusively because they were Tories. Had there 
been any Whig clergymen in those parts, they would 
probably have talked and acted, mutatis mutandis, in 
the same manner. But there were none. 



TORY ARCADIA. 167 

Among others whom I remember in the neigh- 
bourhood, the Rev. Richard Pelham stands out most 
prominently. He was rector of an adjoining village^ 
a hving worth six or seven hundred a year, the 
younger son of a good family, and a man of some taste 
and culture. He had been Captain of Westminster, 
and proceeded in due course to Christchurch, and when 
I first remember him, he had been resident in the county 
about ten years, and was perhaps fifty years of age. 
He was one of those High Churchmen in whom the 
coming dawn of Anglicanism was just becoming visible. 
He was, as I have said, a well-read man, and I can see 
him now sitting after dinner and sipping his port, twid- 
dling the nutcrackers between his finger and thumb, as 
he pronounced ex cathedra that the Oxford men were 
" quite right." Not, indeed, that he was going to live 
up to them. He had been used to the old ways too 
long for that. But he recognised that they had his- 
torical truth on their side, and left it to others to prac- 
tise what they taught. It was the social side of his 
character that was best known. He was a good fisher- 
man, and sometimes went out with his gun, though a 
bad shot. He was a great diner-out and raconteur, 
and was a welcome guest at the best houses in the 
county. In those days a broad jest was more frequent 
than it is now, though suggestive conversation was 
much less so. When Mr. Pelham asked a young lady 
across the dinner table, as I heard him at a large party, 
whether she gartered above or below the knee, the 
question was thought to be in perfectly good taste, 
and created much merriment. He was widely and 
deservedly popular. 

The parson of this class stood, as Mr. Froude very 



i68 TORY MEMORIES. 

truly says, " on sounder terms with his parishioners, 
and had stronger influence over their conduct. He 
had more in common with them. He understood them 
better, and they understood him better. . . . The 
forgotten toast of Church and King was a matter of 
course at every county dinner." And I remember a 
curious illustration of this which I have mentioned 
in another work. A well-known clergyman in our 
neighbourhood, of more decidedly sporting proclivities 
than Pelham, and sometimes seen at pigeon matches, 
was standing one day at the railway station while on 
the opposite platform stood a young curate in the 
most rigidly correct ritualistic costume. An old 
labourer whom he knew came up to Mr. Oakhurst and 
said, " It 'taint the likes o' you, sir, as does any harm to 
the Church ; it's them young pups," jerking his thumb 
in the direction of the youthful Jesuit. This was the 
general view taken by the peasantry and farmers of that 
era. The old-fashioned clergy, if they did hunt and 
shoot, were in much fuller sympathy with their parish- 
ioners, both morally, socially, and religiously, than the 
more straitlaced ascetics who succeeded them. These 
in time won their way to the hearts of the people. But 
it took time. And even now I am afraid their influence 
is not equal to that of the old school, who were gentle- 
men first and priests afterwards. 

Pelham eventually succeeded to the family estate 
in the south of England, but he was followed by a parson 
of the same kidney, who was the last specimen of a 
now nearly extinct class whom I can recollect. He wore 
coloured trousers, a cross-barred neck-cloth, was an 
active magistrate, and I believe at one time Chairman 
of Quarter Sessions. Such men as these were almost of 



TORY ARCADIA. 169 

necessity Tories : one cannot think of them as anything 
else. They were most useful members of society, 
respected by their parishioners, and exercising a rehgi- 
ous influence all the more effective because never un- 
seasonably obtruded. 

It must be confessed, however, that while the ab- 
sence of too marked a professional spirit in the clergy 
I am thinking of really helped to strengthen their 
position, in some respects their confidence in their 
position, inspired by the long dominance of Toryism, 
the natural ally of the Church, did at times tempt some 
of them into vagaries and eccentricities which did no par- 
ticular credit to that honourable creed. I remember 
one man who held a fat living and used to go to Leicester 
every Saturday and sell his own fruit or vegetables in 
the open market. I recollect another, a mechanical 
genius, who invented some machinery for lowering 
coffins into the grave. One Sunday at a funeral, the 
first time the new engine was made trial of, a consider- 
able crowd collected round the grave to see how it 
would work. The tenant of the coffin was a woman 
whom, of course, they had all known. As the parish- 
ioners, especially the females, kept pressing forward, 
the old clergyman became impatient. " The curosity 
of woman," he exclaimed, " is unbounded. Hist her 
up again. Jack " (to the clerk), " and when I have 
finished the service, you can have her up as often as you 
like." This was, perhaps, going a little too far ; but 
old Grimsby was a privileged person, and nobody, I 
believe, thought the worse of him for any of his pecu- 
liarities. Arcadia still retained all its proverbial sim- 
plicity, and the peasantry took much for granted when 
it came from the " Quahty." 



170 TORY MEMORIES. 

A good deal of simple-minded old-fashioned Toryism 
and churchmanship still lingers in Arcadia, even among 
the rising generation. Not long ago I was much amused 
by a conversation which I overheard at a well-known 
Tory club, where two quite young men were dining at 
a table adjoining mine. One of them had just come 
up to town, and his companion was inquiring about 
their mutual friends in the country. How was Brown ? 
How was Jones ? How was Robinson ? These ques- 
tions being answered, the querist bethought him of a 
fourth acquaintance. " Ah ! " he said, " and how's 
old Thompson ? " " Well," says the other, " we don't 
know quite what to make of him. He's given up hunt- 
ing, and doesn't go to church, and all that sort of thing." 
The humour of this I thought something exquisite. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

TORY BOHEMIA. 

Journalism in the Mid-Century — War between Tory and Liberal Journal- 
ists — -James Hannay and G. A. Sala — The Idler — The Retort upon 
" S. and B." — The Company at the "Cock" and the "Cheese" 
— Edgar and his Love of Genealogy — Evans's — The Last Stage in 
Hannay's Career — Mortimer Collins — His Eccentricities — His Love 
of Nature — Charming a Thrush — Edward Whitty — A Bohemian 
who was found Reading the Commination Service — -Antinomies 
of Character — Johnny Baker. 

It is a wide leap from the green fields and quiet villages 
of rural England to the murky atmosphere, incessant 
din, and intellectual activity of Fleet Street and the 
Strand. I have explained in the first chapter how I 
came to enter upon the career of journalism. I may 
now give some account of the companions to whom it 
introduced me. 

When I first settled down in London and began to 
write regularly, there were two elements just begin- 
ning to mingle in the journalistic world. Journahsm 
had not yet come to be regarded as exactly the career 
for a gentleman. At all events, it was not one to which 
in my time members of either Oxford or Cambridge 
University looked forward, as they looked forward to 
what were then known as " the liberal professions." 
But with the beginning of the second half of the last 
century a change began gradually to show itself. There 
had always been a certain number of highly educated 
gentlemen in the higher departments of the London 

171 



172 TORY MEMORIES. 

PresSj but they might have been counted on one's 
fingers. Between 1850 and i860 they had rapidly in- 
creased, and a shght feehng of jealousy had sprung up 
between the old rank-and-file of journahsm and the 
newcomers from the Universities, who were supposed 
to give themselves airs, as well as to be gradually usurp- 
ing the places so long held by a class of men differently 
brought up, and bred to the business from their boy- 
hood. When once I began in earnest as a working 
journalist, I soon became aware of this fact. 

At this time the two leading men in Bohemia, as far 
as I knew it, were James Hannay and George Augustus 
Sala. When I was first introduced to Hannay he was 
supposed to be a Liberal, and I think would have called 
himself so. He was actually regarded as such by all 
his brother Bohemians, and many other journahsts 
and writers who were not of that fraternity — Mr. Hep- 
worth Dixon, Mr. Peter Cunningham, and some others 
less known. By degrees, however, as Mr. Hannay be- 
came acquainted with two or three Oxford men — Mr. 
Sotheby for one, a first-class man, and Fellow of 
Exeter ; William Brandt, of Oriel ; Edward Wilber- 
force ; J. G. Edgar, not a University man, but a very 
clever and original creature, and a red-hot feudalist — 
he gradually began to withdraw himself from his old 
associates, and ere long came out as a decided Tory and 
the leader of a Tory party in the kingdom of Bohemia. 
This change was furiously resented by those whom he 
had left, who called him a turncoat, and a hypocrite, 
one who only professed Toryism to curry favour with 
his fine new friends. Sala told him he was only veneered. 
The two parties set up two rival magazines wherewith 
to combat each other. The Tory periodical, owned 



TORY BOHEMIA. 173 

and edited by Mr. Edward Wilberforce, was called the 
Idler. The Liberal or Radical rival was pubhshed by- 
Messrs. Groombridge, and at this moment I forget its 
name. Of course, Sala and Robert Brough were among 
its leading contributors. In a dialogue they introduced 
the Idler. " What is the Idler ? " says one. " Oh, 
University and water," was the answer. This provoked 
a retort from the Idler, not perhaps in the best taste, but 
which succeeded in its main object of stinging the twin 
assailants to the quick. It was founded on the sup- 
posed ignorance of general literature, and classical litera- 
ture in particular, unjustly attributed to the two gentle- 
men who are indicated by their initials, neither of whom 
at that time was very particular about his personal 
appearance. 

Easy to see why S. and B. 

Should hate the University; 

Easy to see why B. and S. 

Should hate cold water little less : 

While by their works they shew their creed 

That men who write should never read, 

Their faces show they think it bosh 

That men who write should ever wash. 

Sala threatened with a fearful fate " the hound " who 
had written this if he could only find him. 

The war thus begun was carried on with consider- 
able acrimony. Sometimes the two parties met at the 
same tavern, when very high words ensued, and some- 
times efforts were made at conciliation, which, if well 
meant, were not always judicious. I never shall forget 
seeing Sotheby, grandson of the poet, then an Oxford 
Don and the pink of neatness and propriety, walking 
up and down the room with Sala, and trying to persuade 



174 TORY MEMORIES. 

that formidable humorist that University men did not 
despise him. Those who knew Sala will easily imagine 
the countenance with which he received this assurance. 
Sotheby's studious politeness and perseverance only 
enraged him all the more as smacking of condescension. 

James Hannay was not a man to be easily forgotten. 
He never did himself justice. He was endowed by nature 
with a brilliant wit. He had stored his mind with the 
best literature, English and French, Greek and Latin. 
He wrote a charming style, easy without being slovenly, 
racy Avithout being coarse, and never falling below a 
high standard of English composition. He had been in 
the Royal Navy, and was a midshipman on board 
a man-of-war when in 1840 the decks were cleared for 
action in expectation of an immediate collision with the 
French Fleet in the Mediterranean. He had received 
no regular education, nor had he acquired the habit of 
application. But he was a man of frugal tastes, and 
when he threw himself on the Press for a livelihood, he 
soon found no difficulty in providing for his simple 
wants. It was soon after leaving Oxford that I first 
made his acquaintance. Not long afterwards he mar- 
ried, and settled down in a house at Islington, where 
for the next seven or eight years he entertained his 
friends in a simple style after the manner of Charles 
Lamb. But Hannay never really worked hard. He 
was satisfied if he made an income sufficient for 
the passing day. In his admirable wife he had an 
excellent housekeeper, who kept everything straight, 
and saved her husband from all pecuniary worries. I 
think those were some of the happiest days of Hannay's 
life. 

When I came to live permanently in London, I began 



TORY BOHEMIA. 175 

to see a great deal of him. We used to meet in the 
Reading Room of the British Museum, and go out to 
lunch together in a very economical style at a neigh- 
bouring public house — for it was little better — called the 
" Pied Bull," which has now, alas ! been dead for many 
years. I remember a dinner at Blackwall, when Shirley 
Brooks was of the party. He and Hannay had, of 
course, a good deal of literary conversation, and after 
dinner a stranger, who had been sitting at an adjoining 
table, came over to Hannay's, uninvited, saying : " I 
perceived, gentlemen, from your conversation, that you 
were in the literary line, so I took the liberty of joining 
you, as I am, I assure you, lineally descended from 
Addison." Hannay always described the intruder as 
a bagman, and, indeed, his mode of address savoured 
strongly of that profession. His reply was as follows 
" Addison, sir, left only one child, a daughter, who was 
imbecile, a fact, I must allow, which does lend some 
colour to your pretensions ; but as she died without 
issue, I can only regard them as an idiotic fiction." 

Hannay was imbued with the sentiment and the 
romance of Jacobitism, and was very sensible of the 
points which it offered for literary treatment. But 
he went no further. With his love of the old feudal 
fighting days, and his appreciation of the grape com- 
bined, it was natural for him to say of the " white 
rose " that it was " a flower which had always required 
a great deal of moisture, whether wine or blood." At 
the General Election of 1857 he offered himself as a 
Tory candidate for Dumfries against Mr. Ewart, the 
sitting member, an old Whig. Of course, he had no 
chance in those days against such an opponent ; but it 
is a curious thing that he had the show of hands on his 



176 TORY MEMORIES. 

side, and I remember its being noted in a Liberal London 
newspaper how he had talked over a Scots mob to 
Torjdsm. So he had : for he was a briUiant speaker, and 
he made the most of his knowledge of Scottish character 
and Scottish traditions. He used to say that in Scot- 
land you found among the people a curious mixture 
of feudalism and Radicalism. Hannay knew how to 
appeal to both. The middle class constituencies of 
those days cared for neither. Such talk was foolishness 
to them. But the people, the working men, in Scotland 
understood what he meant, and a considerable number 
of old Scottish Tories, who were still to be found in 
sheltered situations, gave him their support. 

nodes ccenczqucB Deum ! when Hannay and Edgar, 
whom I have already mentioned, and a few other 
choice Bohemians to be mentioned hereafter, for- 
gathered at the " Cock " — the old " Cock," I mean : 
Tennyson's " Cock " — or the " Cheshire Cheese," or the 
old " Edinburgh Castle," then a great haunt of the 
Bohemian brotherhood, and talked Toryism, and pedi- 
grees, and literature, and scholarship till the clock 
struck twelve and Sunday had begun, for these sym- 
posia were mostly on " Saturday at e'en." Hannay, as 
a rule, dined at home. But some of the other men 
dined at one or other of these taverns regularly ; for 
Clubs then were much less known than they are now, 
and a great number of gentlemen who now go west- 
ward for their evening meal would then have sought for 
it in Fleet Street. Edgar was a typical Bohemian, and 
always dined at such places when he dined at all, which 
he did not do every day in the week. This was not for 
want of means, but because he did his literary work 
best by long spells at a time, during which he only 



TORY BOHEMIA. 177 

stirred from his lodgings to go to the Museum, and 
drank nothing but coffee. In this last respect, perhaps, 
he was wanting in one attribute of Bohemia. But he 
made amends for his self-imposed abstinence when he 
broke out, and when he had no work in hand he was to 
be found at the " Cheese " every night of his life. 

His favourite study was genealogy — the history of 
the great feudal families of Great Britain, and of such 
of their descendants as could honestly claim kin with 
them, and were entitled to be held of what he and 
Hannay used to call " the regular tap." If any man 
of name unknown to fame distinguished himself in arts 
or arms, they made desperate efforts to bring him within 
the charmed circle, sometimes by the dexterous trans- 
formation of a single letter, sometimes by making a wide 
cast and picking up the scent of him three centuries 
back. This to Edgar was a labour of love. He scorned 
to turn the vast amount of knowledge which he acquired 
in this way to any useful end, beyond the help it afforded 
him in writing books for boys, in which he was very 
skilful. He used this valuable stock of information, 
as was truly said of him, as the man-at-arms in the 
Middle Ages used the gold chain which he had acquired 
in the wars, breaking off a link or two of it now and 
then to supply his immediate necessities — but no more. 
It was curious, according to the life he led, that he 
should have subsisted chiefly by writing children's 
books ; but so it was, though he had some newspaper 
employment subsidiary to it which made his income 
equal to his wants. He possessed some virtues not 
common in Bohemia. He was never in debt. When 
he got fifty pounds for a book he handed over thirty 
pounds of it to his landlady and kept the remainder for 



178 TORY MEMORIES. 

himself, of which a large part, no doubt, went into 
the pockets of Mr. Dolamore, the genial proprietor of 
the " Cheshire." " I think old Edgar," said Hannay 
one day, " is the happiest man I know. He gets up in 
the morning and saunters down to the 'Mus.'" (as the 
Museum was fondly called in those days by its Bohemian 
frequenters), " and busies himself in Dugdale or CoUins 
till four or five. Then he goes down to his newspaper 
office, and potters over a pedigree or an obituary notice, 
and writes a paragraph. Then he goes on to the 
' Cheshire Cheese ' and has his steak and his six 
tumblers, which just carry him through all his favourite 
ideas." 

Hannay was of a more practical turn than Edgar. 
He looked up to Lord Derby, and was proud of having 
for his political chief one of such " irreproachable 
lineage," as the Baron of Bradwardine calls it. He 
admired Lord Palmerston, too, whom Edgar did not 
scruple to describe as a " flash Irishman." 

Neither of these two men, be it remembered, nor 
any of their usual companions, ever dreamed of show- 
ing themselves in Society, or of seeking admittance to 
those fashionable assemblies to which others in every 
way their inferiors were readily welcomed. They were 
the true descendants of the Boyces and the Savages — 
the wild asses, as Macaulay calls them, who were 
untameable and seemingly incorrigible. There were 
degrees, however, amongst them. Dr. Johnson emerged 
from Bohemia, took Beauclerk's advice to purge and 
live cleanly " like a gentleman," and was no unwelcome 
figure in a lady's drawing-room. Hannay, though a 
thorough Bohemian at heart, was prevented by his wife 
from giving himself up entirely to its wild tavern life. 



TORY BOHEMIA. 179 

and when he went to Edinburgh as Editor of the 
Evening Courant, was wilhng to lead a hfe of con- 
ventional respectability. But he never lost the 
Bohemian ethos; for after his marriage, I remember 
hearing him say, a propos of Christmas dinner parties, 
for which he had great contempt, that " a lot of fellows 
ought to get together over a piece of beef and a bowl 
of punch." He had no idea of real domesticity ; and 
he was most fortunate in his wife, who thoroughly under- 
stood him, and never interfered with propensities which, 
however inconvenient she may at times have found 
them, were innocent in themselves. 

When I paid him a visit at Edinburgh I found him 
and his family all very happy. I was introduced to 
Alexander Smith, and we had a tavern dinner with 
cock-a-leekie and haggis at some house of repute, the 
" Cock " or the " Cheshire Cheese " of Edinburgh. It 
was a very jovial evening, quite in the Bohemian style, 
and was only marred, if at all, by Hannay's excessive 
love of making speeches, and of insisting on other men 
making them, whether they had any faculty for it or not. 
I have suffered dreadfully in my time from this pro- 
pensity at the hands of other men as well as Hannay. 
It was as bad as the horrid old custom of compelling 
a man to sing after dinner or supper, on pain of having 
to swallow a tumbler of salt-and-water. I know I had 
to propose the health of Alexander Smith, and I be- 
lieve that in sheer desperation I compared him to 
Shakespeare, Pope and Tennyson lumped into one. One 
day we rode out to Roslin and threaded Hawthorn- 
den. Of course we ascended " the High Castle rock," 
associated for ever with " Bonny Dundee," a favourite 
song of Hannay's, which he would recite as often as 



i8o TORY MEMORIES. 

an opportunity occurred ; and I remember on one 
occasion, when we and a party of Bohemians were 
having supper at Evans's, we all struck up " Bonny 
Dundee " at the top of our voices, to the great amuse- 
ment of the company, who took it very good-naturedly, 
though I daresay the effect of it was very ludicrous, as 
everyone sang it to the tune he knew best. 

Speaking of Evans's reminds me that this, too, 
was a great haunt of Bohemians and of those who 
passed to and fro between Bohemian and conventional 
society, and were equally at home in both. Among 
such men I remember Frank Talfourd, Wilham Hale, 
Andy O'Brien (surnamed, when he was at Eton, Phubs, a 
name which somehow or other seemed to fit him remark- 
ably well). I had known Talfourd at Oxford, and when 
we met again in London we became for a time pretty 
intimate. To Evans's often came Serjeant Ballantine, 
Buckstone, and Albert Smith. Talfourd, of course, 
who was then well known as a burlesque writer, intro- 
duced me to those three stars, and I considered it a high 
privilege to sit at the same table with any one of them. 
Buckstone, however, was so deaf that it was no use 
trying to talk to him ; but it was enough to hear him 
speak. His voice was sufficient. Talfourd, I remember, 
invited myself and some other Oxford friends to a Fancy 
Dress Ball at Lady Talfourd's. We went — I, at least in 
plain clothes ; and actors and actresses who came in 
late from the theatres did the same. I found the party 
rather dull, as I knew nobody, was no dancer, and had 
no costume to strut about in. So I left early and 
betook myself to the " Cock," where, in company with a 
congenial friend, who happened to be there, we enjoyed, 
till past midnight, the oysters and porter which were 



TORY BOHEMIA. i8i 

served at that tavern in the good old days up to two 
o'clock in the morning. 

When Hannay left the Courant — partly, I think, 
owing to some dispute with the proprietors, who dis- 
liked the freedom with which he wrote of some of the 
party leaders — he was entertained at a grand banquet, 
Wordsworth, Bishop of St. Andrews, taking the chair, 
and Professor Hill Burton (though himself a Whig) 
the vice-chair. On that occasion Hannay asserted what 
he thought ought to be the position of a party journalist, 
and his relations with the party leaders. " I am," he 
said, " their soldier, but not their servant. I wear 
their uniform, but not their plush." This distinction, 
loudly applauded by the audience, has always struck 
me as a very happy one ; and it is one, I believe, that 
the leaders of the Tory party, at headquarters at least, 
have always recognised. 

The mention of this dinner calls to my mind another 
which was given to Mr. Hannay by his literary friends 
in London when he left it to take charge of the Courant. 
Mr. Hepworth Dixon was in the chair on that occasion. 
And I am sorry to say that the dinner did not pass 
off without some little friction arising from that smoulder- 
ing literary feud to which I have referred at the begin- 
ning of this chapter. Hannay rather resented the 
somewhat patronising tone in which the Chairman 
proposed his health, and in the course of his remarks 
curiously enough repeated in substance what Newman 
says in " The Office and Work of Universities," a book 
which, I am sure, Hannay had never seen. He said 
that service in the Navy was as good an education as 
life in a college, and that when he joined the hterary 
circle in London he brought with him a training which 



i82 TORY MEMORIES. 

many of its members might have envied. The Navy 
was his university. I can't recollect his exact words, 
but this was the pith of what he said. 

At another dinner, given him when he left Edinburgh 
by the staff and business employees of the Courant, he 
compared himself (as Editor of that fogified organ) to 
" a solitary centurion left in defence of the wall of 
Hadrian." He came back to London in 1865 and wrote 
for the Pall Mall Gazette, just then launched by Mr. 
Frederick Greenwood. Another of his witticisms that 
I recollect was delivered about this time when a deputa- 
tion from the licensed victuallers waited on him with a 
request that he would advocate their cause against the 
grocers who were licensed to sell wine as well as tea. 
" We are fighting," said the spokesman, " for our own 
rights, the right to sell tea as well as wine." " Yes," 
said Hannay, " I see — it's your grape against their 
canister." 

But Hannay came back to London an altered man, 
and he sometimes regretted that he had ever left it. 
The death of his first wife — a heavy sorrow to him — 
changed him still more, and when he accepted from the 
Government the consulship at Barcelona, one reason for 
his doing so, I think, was because he felt himself changed, 
and less and less able to apply himself to regular work. 
He had also at that time some pecuniary embarrass- 
ments, which made a change of climate desirable ; and 
as I first saw him in Bohemia, so I last saw him on a 
spot with which the denizens of that region are only too 
familiar. I never saw him again, but I had several 
letters from him, one written at a time when his second 
wife was on her death-bed, in which he says : "I have 
taken a charming country house, a tower or ' Torre ' 



TORY BOHEMIA. 183 

on the slopes behind the city, with a garden full of orange 
trees, and endless classical flowers of all kinds, and where 
the nightingale sings in the ivy, as at Colonos. She 
[his wife] deUghts in the change ; but, somehow, the 
very beauty of the place makes it all the sadder." 
This was written in 1870. In another letter he says 
of the Spaniards that " they smoke everywhere but in 
the kitchen chimney." Hannay was never more really 
reconciled to his exile than Ovid was. He frequently 
spoke of paying a visit to London, but he never did, 
and he died at Barcelona in the year 1873. 

I subjoin an extract from another of his letters from 
Barcelona. The " citizen of a greater State " is, of 
course, himself : — 

Those Yankees are devils of fellows, with plenty of money, 
given to hospitality, and many of them as good conservatives as 
you or I. The skipper of the Wachuselt, familiarly known in the 
service as " Brassy Bushman," is justly described by his officers 
as a caution to porcupines. I dined with him, and the liquoring 
was considerable. With their queer Yankee frankness, he told me 
that his father had had some Red Indian blood in his veins, which 
accounted for some traits in the paternal character. " After my 
brother's death," said the skipper, " he became vindictive and mis- 
anthropical and neglected his business." A sentence which stuck 
in my memory, knowing as I did a citizen of a stiU greater State 
whose history it partially described ! To these accidents of war- 
ships' visits — and passing tourists — ^we owe our only social recrea- 
tion. T'other day I talked for a quarter of an hour, with whom 
think ye, Keb ? the ex-Duke of Tuscany — a Hapsburg and cousin of 
the Kaiser. He is rich, unmarried, accomplished, and comes every 
summer to a palace he bas in the Balearic Isles. I have been advising 
Bessie, who is now a fine lass of seventeen, to set her cap at him, 
and have pointed out how well it would look in the Dumfries Courier. 
Galloway would be convulsed, and I would send all my old classical 
and feudal friends little dona of real Tokay ! 

Bessie was Hannay's eldest daughter, whom I re- 
member as a very handsome child ; but it is now many 



i84 TORY MEMORIES. 

years since I set eyes on her. She is happily married, 
I beheve, but not to the Grand Duke. 

Hannay I shall always remember in connection with 
my own sojourn in Bohemia: When I think of that life, 
I think of him and Edgar, and not of anybody else. 
But I knew plenty more, who, if not equal to Hannay, 
were thoroughgoing Bohemian Tories. There was Mor- 
timer Collins, a remarkably clever versifier, who ran to 
seed and died comparatively young, partly no doubt in 
consequence of the unnatural Hfe he led, to say nothing 
of his convivial excesses. I knew him first as a con- 
tributor to the Idler aforesaid, in which he wrote some 
very pretty verses called " The Ivory Gate." 

Then the oars of Ithaca dip so 

Silently into the sea, 
That they wake not sad Calypso, 

And the hero wanders free. 
He ploughs the ocean furrows 

At war with the words of fate, 
And the blue tide's low susurrus 

Comes up through the ivory gate. 

He was a ferocious Tory and a castigator of everything 
which he considered, rightly or wrongly, to savour of 
cant — as often, perhaps, wrongly as rightly. He wrote 
a comic drama in imitation of " The Birds" of Aristo- 
phanes, in which he has the following undeniably witty 
jest at the expense of Positivism, it being nothing to the 
purpose that he did not understand what it was. 

There was an ape in the days that were earlier ; 
Centuries passed and his hair became curlier ; 
Centuries more gave a thumb to his wrist, 
Then he was man, and a Positivist. 

He was a curious creature to look at. He always dressed 
in the same way, winter and summer. He wore, as far 



TORY BOHEMIA, 185 

as I remember, an ordinary dark morning coat with a 
white waistcoat and often a pair of rather short white 
trousers, neither of the two garments looking as if it 
could ever have been clean. He usually wore a round 
hat, and carried a parcel of books under his arm. 
In this guise he might have been seen prowhng about 
the newspaper offices, or, if in cash, driving from one to 
another in a hired brougham, stiU the same dirty, dis- 
reputable-looking object that I have described. He 
was a tall, weU-made, and rather good-looking man, 
though the leer with which he usually greeted you on 
meeting him in the street was not an agreeable saluta- 
tion. I have no reason to doubt that he was sincere in 
his Conservative politics and in his dislike of Liberals 
and Radicals. But there was sometimes an air of 
affectation in his political utterances, and the twinkle 
of his eye and the expression of his mouth every now 
and then seemed to say : " I'm one humbug, and you're 
another, and we both know it." One could always teU 
when Colhns had just come down from a favourable 
interview with his publisher. After making shift for 
a dinner as well as he could for months, he might be 
met some day with his pocket full of money, hurrying 
off, perhaps in company with his wife, to lunch at Birch's 
or the " Ship " on turtle and punch and champagne. 

But there was another side to his character which 
presented an interesting ethical problem. This rattling, 
boisterous man, the loudest laugher in the tavern, coarse 
in his language, coarse in his tastes, and seemingly only 
in his native element among the lowest circles of Bohemia, 
was, nevertheless, a sincere lover of nature, fond of 
birds and flowers, and of taking long walks among the 
woods adjoining the little Berkshire village in which he 



i86 TORY MEMORIES. 

had made himself a nest. Here he used to retire after 
his " fling " in the metropolis ; and here I visited him 
more than once. If I had gone much oftener I should 
not be alive to tell the tale. Talk went on till two or 
three o'clock in the morning — talk not always of the 
most refined character. The next morning lunch and 
breakfast seemed to be knocked into one, cold roast beef 
and port wine being the viands on which CoUins's guests 
were supposed to break their fast, as Collins did him- 
self, A walk in the afternoon passed away the time 
tiU dinner, which was of an equally solid and substan- 
tial character with breakfast. Collins, I believe, only 
worked at night, and when he slept I don't know. He 
used to sit down to write at ten o'clock at night, and I 
suppose he went on till about six, and then slept, per- 
haps, till eleven or twelve. When he had a guest in the 
house, however, he took a holiday, for he was throwing 
up pebbles at my bedroom window between nine and 
ten in the morning. 

To illustrate his fondness for birds, and the con- 
fidence with which he inspired them, he showed me 
a thrush's nest, in which the old bird was sitting. She 
suffered Collins to approach her and gently stroke her 
back for some minutes, and probably would not have 
moved had he stood there longer. This I thought 
very curious. To see this great, rough, loud roisterer, 
redolent of Fleet Street toddy and Bohemian slang, 
suddenly transformed into a child of Nature, and capable 
of charming a bird upon her nest, was a kind of revelation. 

One of CoUins's favourite amusements at Knole 
Hill was to stand at his garden gate on Sunday morning 
and watch the people going to and returning from church. 
The different countenances which they wore on these 



TORY BOHEMIA. 187 

occasions respectively afforded him intense delight. 
Xhey went with gloomy faces and came back with very 
cheerful ones. This Collins interpreted in his own 
fashion as a sign that the congregation congratulated 
themselves on having discharged a painful duty and 
got it over. I suggested to him a different construction 
— namely, that they might have heard something at 
church which did them good. This probability did not 
seem to have occurred to him. The last thing I heard of 
Collins was that he had been selected as secretary to 
some newly formed company at, I think, Liverpool, 
as being calculated from his size, his bearing, and the 
loudness of his voice to " overawe committees." 

Another of the children of Bohemia whom I knew 
well, and perhaps the ablest man among them, except 
Hannay, was Edward Whitty. He was not a Tory, it 
is true ; but he did not enrol himself in the ranks of 
the opposite party. He sat, so to speak, upon the cross- 
benches. He first made himself famous by " The 
Stranger in Parliament," a series of papers contributed 
to the Leader, a weekly journal owned and conducted 
by Mr. Pigott. These articles, constituting a fresh depar- 
ture in journalism, were published in the early 'fifties 
and attracted general attention. Whitty was a great 
friend of mine, and outside the circle of my immediate 
sodales, as Hannay called them, I thought him the 
best of the Bohemians. He was a Roman Catholic, 
but so accustomed to look at the humorous side of public 
questions that it was easy to talk with him without 
lapsing into controversy. But he had rather con- 
fused ideas about English politics ; and I remember in 
one of his books, after drawing a highly coloured picture 
of the state of the Haymarket at two o'clock in the 



i88 TORY MEMORIES. 

morning, in those days the rendezvous of the demi- 
monde and their admirers, he cries out, " And bishops 
sleep in their beds," etc. As I asked, when noticing his 
book in the press, " Where should bishops be at two 
o'clock in the morning, but in their beds ? He wouldn't 
have had them in the Haymarket, would he ? " Whitty, 
however, if not a profound reasoner, was a most amusing 
companion, and he had aU the qualities of a true 
Bohemian : all the wit, all the weaknesses, all the care- 
lessness about money, and all the generosity with which 
they give it to a friend in need. 

He took the editorship of the Northern Whig at 
Belfast in 1857 J but, not succeeding, he ultimately 
went to Australia, and there, I think, he died in the year 
i860. He was not reckless or slovenly like Collins, 
nor addicted to six tumblers like Edgar ; but he knew 
nothing of any other society than that of Bohemia, and 
lived in it contentedly as long as he was in London- 
One of his fellow tribesmen, who shall be nameless, 
once delighted Whitty very much by the reply which 
he gave to a magistrate who made some caustic remarks 
upon the effect of gin-drinking on literature. The 
gentleman in question came before him as a witness, 
not a prisoner, to give evidence in favour of some friend 
who had got into trouble on his way home from the 
" Cheshire Cheese." The witness, who had been drink- 
ing gin punch with him up to a late hour, was required 
to state in what condition his friend was when he left 
that tavern. His evidence, however, was of such a 
confused character that the magistrate evidently thought 
that the witness had been as drunk as the prisoner. 
" Don't you find, sir," said the magistrate with great 
severity, " that your books " — for the witness was an 



TORY BOHEMIA. 189 

author — " smell of gin ? " " They do," was the reply, 
" and they sell in consequence." 

I remember two or three more who, though often in 
Bohemia and mixing freely with the natives, were 
not of the true breed, but who, in their avoidance of 
polite society and their devotion to the tavern life, 
resembled them so much that they may well find a 
place among my memories. One such was a man of 
good family in the West of England, a staunch Tory, a 
good scholar, and a sound Churchman, yet addicted to 
what Johnson pleasantly calls the lighter vices. He 
lived in chambers and announced that he had entirely 
given up going out to dinner because he could not bear 
the trouble of dressing. He was, however, a thorough 
gentleman. He was at Westminster and Christchurch, 
and knew Homer and Horace thoroughly. I quote 
him now as a solitary instance of Bohemian piety sur- 
viving in such incongruous surroundings. He, too, was 
a great frequenter of the " Cock." And I remember his 
being found one evening at the time of the Paris Com- 
mune sitting in a box by himself with a tumbler of 
punch by his side, and solemnly reading the Commina- 
tion Service. He thought the outbreak of the Com- 
mune was a righteous retribution following the social 
wickedness of the Second Empire, for he had been given 
to understand there were not ten righteous men or women 
to be found in Paris. So strange a mixture of open 
and avowed profligacy with unaffected religious feel- 
ing I never met with, nor heard of, unless it was in 
Steele himself, to whom the above-mentioned words of 
Dr. Johnson were applied. 

I suppose, however, that such cases are in reality 
far from uncommon ; for, as we all know, men's lives 

\ 



I go TORY MEMORIES. 

do not always correspond to their beliefs, even when these 
are perfectly sincere. But there was something more 
than this in the very blended character of my friend. 
His evil life he led in perfect good faith, without, I 
believe, seeing any harm in it, or wishing to disguise it. 
His religious spirit was perfectly simple and unaffected ; 
there never was a man, either in Bohemia or out of it, 
with less taint of hypocrisy about him. The blend 
was quite unique. 

A very popular inhabitant of Tory Bohemia was 
Sutherland Edwards, who, indeed, was at home in 
every clime and in every circle. He and Hannay had 
been free of the literary brotherhood long before I 
knew them, and had tales to tell distantly reminding 
one of Johnson and Savage. I first won Edwards's 
regard by saying of Mr. Gladstone many long years 
ago that he was the kind of man to dine at two o'clock 
and have an egg with his tea ; not that I supposed him 
actually to do this, but that such was his temperament 
— a supposition, I believe, not founded on fact. The 
Bohemians of those days were occasionally impransi, 
and Edwards wrote some verses commemorative of 
a consultation in which various schemes for procuring 
that day's meal were discussed and abandoned. There 
is a certain humour about them which, however, may 
not be tasted by everybody. I only remember the 
last stanza : — 

There's Jones : he has a joint at five ; 

But then it's such a way, 
I think we'll have an early tea, 

We cannot dine to-day. 

A great friend of Edwards and Hannay and myself 
was Dr. Steele, always a welcome guest in Bohemian 



TORY BOHEMIA. 191 

circles, a good scholar, a capital talker, and a most 
amiable and agreeable man. He was on the staff of the 
Lancet for thirty years. He was strong in Horace, 
and wrote very fluent alcaics worthy the countryman 
of Buchanan. I mention this to show once more that 
Bohemia was not barbarous, as Boileau supposed England 
to be till he saw Addison's Latin verses. 

I must conclude this chapter with one more speci- 
men of the genus, who, without being an all-round 
Bohemian, was good enough for me, and, without being 
a declared Tory, wrote for a Tory paper, and practically 
belonged to that party. Johnny Baker was a distin- 
guished classical scholar, but he washed up in London 
as a journalist some years after he left the University. 
His proceedings were peculiar. He would write well 
and brilliantly for, say, three or four months at a stretch, 
at the expiration of which time he would rush one day 
into his Editor's room and declare his intention of 
taking a holiday forthwith. " I'm off into the country," 
he would say ; " shan't leave my address either with 
you or anybody else. Nobody " — with a chuckle — 
" wiU be able to find me." And off he went, burying 
himself in some obscure public-house in a remote part 
of the country, and drinking steadily for weeks together. 
When he had had enough he would return to town as 
suddenly as he had left it, give himself a hot bath, and 
turn up at the newspaper office the next day, clean, 
sensible, and ready to begin work again directly. The 
drink seemed to have no effect upon him at all, so far as 
one could judge. 

I don't know whether this wild country still exists, 
or has been disforested. I have not taken my readers, 
nor did I venture myself, into some of its innermost 



192 TORY MEMORIES. 

recesses, where in those days it was said that if a man 
had shown himself in evening dress, he would have been 
torn to pieces. I am not ashamed to say I enjoyed my 
own experience of it very much ; but perhaps I only 
saw the bright side of it. Anyway, the memories 
of Bohemia transcend the memories of Mayfair, and 
are equal, I think, to those of Arcadia, though very 
different in kind. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

TORY CLUBS. 

The Tumbler and its Leading Spirits — The Rambler — Installation at 
Dick's — ^Witty Irish Members — Jack Ormsby — -His Narrow Escape 
from Drowning — His Liking for Practical Jokes — Toryism and 
Scholarship — Gowen Evans — Sotheby — -Trevor : a Loud Snorer — 
— His Cynicism — -George Danvers and the Sub-Editorial Nose — 
Henry Fawcett — Twenty Years Afterwards — The Canning Club — 
The Cecil — The Junior Carlton and St. Stephen's. 

I HAVE been associated with the foundation of three 
Tory clubs, one of which exists still. The others, though 
not nominally and ostentatiously Tory, deserve the 
title, because four-fifths of the members belonged to 
that party. I am not going to take my readers into 
the august penetralia of the Carlton or White's — in 
tenui labor — nor into the first institution of this character 
to which I belonged. It ought more properly to have 
come under the head of Bohemia, and I am afraid 
that its habits were of somewhat too convivial a cast 
to find favour with this degenerate age. Its name was 
the Tumbler. Hannay and Edgar, of whom I have had 
something to say in the chapter on Tory Bohemia, 
were its leading spirits, and they generally succeeded in 
checking any tendency to Liberalism or Radicalism 
which the conversation might betray. I think the 
Tumbler only lasted one year, but from its loins sprang 
another, which had a much longer lease of life, and 
numbered in its ranks men who afterwards made some 

N ,93 



194 TORY MEMORIES. 

figure in the world. It was not entirely devoted to the 
rites of Bacchus, which caused a former member of the 
Tumbler and the nephew of a Bishop to say to me, with 
scorn and derision, when I explained the nature of 
the new club to him, " Ah, I see : the Tumbler with a 
little water in it." He refused to join it, though he was 
a very pronounced Tory, with a pleasant wit — as in his 
reply to one who was asserting that the French Revolu- 
tion had started a new order of things in Europe, and 
that you couldn't go behind it. "I wish I could," he 
said ; " I'd lend it a toe." However, we had to go on 
without this agreeable gentleman, and when I tell my 
readers at once that this club met every night from 
November ist to August ist, and that it lasted nine 
years, I think they wiU agree with me that it must 
have had some salt in it. 

It was called the Rambler, and when it was at its 
fullest niimbered some three-and-twenty members — 
barristers, journalists, men of letters, artists. Fellows 
of Colleges, of whom about fifteen were declared Tories, 
and of the rest I can only remember two who ever called 
themselves anything else. We drank the health of 
Lord Derby and of Disraeli solemnly every Saturday 
night, which was the guest night, and during the week 
many vigorous onslaughts on our foes and ingenious 
defences of our friends were the work of Ramblers. 
Our place of meeting when we finally settled down was 
just what the home of such a club should be. We had 
tried one or two others first. We thought the old 
" Mitre," in Fleet Street, a respectable tavern where 
you could get a good dinner and good wine, would suit 
us. The venerable name of Johnson, too, seemed to 
point it out as the proper resort of a Tory club. But, 



TORY CLUBS. 195 

for some reason or other, it did not please us, and after 
trpng another in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden 
we ultimately fixed upon Dick's, that famous tavern 
whither Steele took his party from Shire Lane, where 
Cowper, when living in the Temple, came to breakfast in 
his dressing-gown, and where Mr. Bungay "invited Mr. 
Finucane and Mr. Trotter to cut their mutton " with him 
and talk over the new evening paper to be brought out 
by that enterprising publisher. Dick's was a house 
with a history, and when the Ramblers took up their 
abode there it was fairly prosperous. Our club room was 
a large room upstairs with windows looking out on Hare 
Court, and two or three of us generally dined in the 
coffee room. 

For the first few years we had among us two or three 
very pleasant Irish law students, all educated at Trinity 
College, Dublin, well-born, cultivated gentlemen with 
no signs about them of that scarcity of coin which it 
has pleased some ill-natured satirists to regard as a 
frequent characteristic of their countrymen in London. 
They were well-read and witty men, and one of them 
(Whitley Stokes) is now among the first Celtic scholars of 
the day. He was in India for nineteen years, and did 
not return till the Rambler was no more. The others, 
aU but one, went back to Dublin to practise at the Irish 
Bar, and Dick's was duller for the want of them. 

Another of the Irish party, also from Trinity, Dublin, 
unlike the others, had come to stay. He was not a 
law student. He still had some httle landed property 
in Ireland — aU that was left to him out of a con- 
siderable estate when the Encumbered Estates Act had 
done with it. On this he lived, with such addition 
to his income as he could make by writing ; for 



196 TORY MEMORIES. 

he was a very clever and humorous essayist and a 
great favourite with Douglas Cook, the j&rst Editor 
of the Saturday Review. I am speaking of that good 
Irish Tory, John Ormsby, one of my dearest friends, 
and one of the best men to go about with — as I once 
heard someone say of Jack Mytton — that I ever 
met. He was of an old Anglo-Irish family, the son 
of an old Peninsular man, and grandson of the Colonel 
Ormsby who was described by the Times in 1798 as 
having been " very busy among the rebels." My friend 
would have made a fine light cavalryman ; but his lot 
was otherwise ordained, and it was good for us at Dick's 
that it was so ; for he was the life and soul of the 
Ramblers, and a very constant attendant. 

I did a good deal of "going about " with Jack, as we 
always called him. I remember one experience in par- 
ticular. I don't know how it happened, but once in the 
middle of June we found ourselves about five o'clock in 
the morning on London Bridge. It was a beautiful bright 
morning, and the river looked lovely. We were neither 
of us inclined to go to bed ; but we were getting hungry, 
and at last the idea occurred to one of us that we 
might go and breakfast at Billingsgate. We had often 
dined there at the fish dinner ; so we knew where to 
go, and a capital breakfast we had in the room with 
the fish salesmen. Such coffee and such broiled salmon 
I have rarely tasted. I teU this story without any 
compunction ; for, according to Jack's namesake in 
" Coningsby," no Tory ought to be ashamed of being 
up all night. We got our breakfast about seven, and 
smoked and looked at the market tiU about nine, when 
we slowly strolled back by way of Cheapside and New- 
gate, till we reached Holborn Hill, where we parted. 



TORY CLUBS. 197 

Jack to his chambers in the Temple and I to mine in 
Gray's Inn. 

This mention of Billingsgate reminds me of another 
curious trait in the character of the gentleman who was 
found reading the Commination service.* He took 
his two sisters, two country girls, daughters of a 
wealthy clergyman, to dine at the fish dinner at four 
o'clock p.m., and was very much astonished that they 
refused to stay when long clay pipes and gin punch 
were produced. 

To return to Jack Ormsby : another time he was 
anxious that I should go with him to a prize fight, which 
I agreed to, but was prevented at the last moment. He 
himself wrote a graphic account of it in the Cornhill, 
and gave an equally lively description of it at Dick's 
when my Commination friend, who, as I have said, 
knew his Horace, happened to be present. The fight 
took place somewhere down the river, and, of 
course, on board the steamer there was the usual con- 
course of roughs and men who made you feel glad that 
you had left your watch at home. Someone whom 
Ormsby knew told him that he kept a sovereign in his 
boot. " Ha ! " said our classical gentleman, " licet 
superbus ambules fecunia." 

We very nearly lost our dear Jack during the early 
Rambler days. Hannay, who was not a member of the 
club, but who was continually mixing with us, pro- 
posed to Stokes, Ormsby, and one or two others that 
they should come down to see him, I think at Southend, 
where he had gone with his wife. They went, and 
Hannay took them out for a sail. Someone suggested 
bathing, and Ormsby and Stokes each took a header 

* See ante, p. 189. 



igS TORY MEMORIES. 

into the sea. After they had been swimming about 
for a short time, what was their horror to see the boat 
gradually receding from them. Whether Hannay had 
done it for a joke, or whether from sheer thoughtlessness, 
I never knew ; but, fortunately, he was made aware 
of the situation in time, and just picked up poor Ormsby 
when he was nearly exhausted. I think if Ormsby had 
been drowned the Rambler would have ceased to exist. 

Ormsby at that time used to visit his property in 
Mayo every year, and stay at the old house, Gortnor 
Abbey, which has since been turned into an hotel ; and 
while he was in London he often received letters from 
his tenants with various complaints or petitions, very 
often of the most grotesque character, which their land- 
lord would bring down to the Ramblers and read to us. 
One poor fellow required his landlord to compensate 
him for the loss of his ear, which some Mike or Pat upon 
the estate had " spited off." The relics of Jack's pro- 
perty came to an end at last, and Gortnor knew him 
no more ; but he did not leave the Temple for some 
years after this, and after the Ramblers had dispersed, 
many an evening I spent with him in King's Bench 
Walk, listening to his talk about Ireland, or Spain, or 
Africa. I remember his coming back from Algeria with 
a face burned to the colour of a new brick, only to tell 
us, however, that he had not succeeded in shooting a 
lion, but had only heard one roar in the distance. In 
Spain he had explored Castile on foot, and so prepared 
himself for that translation of " Don Quixote " which 
was almost his last literary undertaking. His health 
broke down soon after, and he died in, I think, the year 
1887. 

He was a man whom it was refreshing even to look 



TORY CLUBS. 199 

at, and had a humour of his own, which was always 
finding vent, no matter what the subject. He wrote 
a good deal for the Saturday Review when that journal 
was at the height of its reputation, and some of his 
papers in Fraser and the Cornhill were quite equal to 
Charles Lamb. I may mention two in particular, one 
on Street Boys and another on Loose Men, brim full of 
fun, and the last especially showing a talent for character- 
drawing which many more eminent men might have 
envied, and which, had he made the most of it, might 
have permanently enriched him. He was a good Spanish 
and German scholar, and his translations from both lan- 
guages were highly praised by unimpeachable judges. 
He could write verse as well as prose, and an imi- 
tation of Browning's " Through the Metidja to Abd-el- 
Kadr " in his " Rambles in North Africa " is worthy to 
rank with Bon Gaultier. He was as clever with his 
pencil as with his pen, and illustrated some of his own 
books with great skill and humour. In Jack, if ever in 
any man, was the mens sana in corpore sano. He was a 
well-known mountaineer, and had climbed some of the 
highest peaks in Switzerland. He had gone for bears 
in the Pyrenees, and stalked chamois on the Alps. 

Ormsby was at home in all kinds of society, and de- 
lighted to visit every scene in which human nature could 
be studied. I have told about his visit to a prize fight, and 
I must add a brief description of what he saw at Greenwich 
Fair. This delighted him. Standing outside one of the 
booths, which was densely packed with a crowd to whom 
it barely afforded standing room, he observed that the 
figures of those pressed up against the canvas walls within 
were very clearly delineated on that material. One 
unhappy man or boy — he never knew which, but I 



200 TORY MEMORIES. 

suppose the latter — was so tightly squeezed against the 
canvas that the part of him which some philosophers 
assert to have been intended by Nature for the recep- 
tion of punishment protruded very visibly, and offered 
a temptation which a barbarous wag outside was un- 
able to resist. He carried in his hand a thin switch cane, 
which he applied vigorously to the person of the poor 
wretch within, for whom, of course, there was no escape. 
The contortions of the miserable victim, as every stroke 
told upon the canvas, which was quite " taut," his un- 
availing writhings, and vain attempts to straighten 
himself, used to be described by Jack with infinite 
gusto. A kinder-hearted man never breathed. But 
there is a certain class of humorists — I have encountered 
several of them — who are at the mercy of their pre- 
dominant faculty, and who, when once their keen sense 
of the ludicrous is roused, are oblivious for the moment 
of every other consideration. I am afraid my friend 
Jack was one of these from his youth up ; for the stories 
which he had to tell of his school-days discovered the 
same propensity at work, and recorded the sufferings 
at his hands of many inoffensive beings. 

Jack had these little weaknesses, but he was, in the 
best sense of the word, " a choice spirit." His Irish wit 
and his English common-sense made him a delightful 
companion at all times, whether gaiety or gravity was 
uppermost ; and his sound Tory principles, coupled with 
his very wide sympathies, made him an ideal politician 
in the eyes of the enlightened circle with whom Palmer- 
ston was nearly as great a favourite as Derby. Palmer- 
ston was a man after Ormsby's own heart, and the 
Rambler Tories in general regarded him with a friendly 
eye. The geniality of the man captivated them. But 



TORY CLUBS. 201 

there were some among them who looked further ahead 
and considered what his pohtical conduct was hkely 
to lead to in the future. The Ramblers saw even at 
that early date what a splendid opportunity had been 
lostj both in 1855 and in 1858, of forming a powerful 
Conservative Government, and there were those 
who regarded Lord Palmerston as the chief obstacle 
to it. Others threw the blame almost exclusively on 
Gladstone. 

After the Dublin Ramblers, I come to the Oxford 
and Cambridge men who figured in the club's catalogue. 
Brandt, one of the foremost among them, a most uncom- 
promising Tory, who repudiated Palmerston, was a man 
of great intellectual powers, but of very original habits. 
He was a scholar of his college at Oxford, and second for 
the Hertford scholarship ; and illness alone prevented 
him from taking high honours in the final examination. 
He was, it is needless to say, an excellent classical 
scholar — and scholarship, by many of the Ramblers, 
was considered to be a kind of handmaid of Toryism. 
If we go far enough back we shall find that some of our 
best-known scholars, such as Addison, Gray, and Dr. 
Parr were Whigs ; but later, after the alliance between 
the Whigs and the Radicals, the former seem to have 
put Greek and Latin in the background in deference to 
their new friends. Thus Lord Wellesley, Lord Gren- 
ville. Lord Derby, and Mr. Canning came to be regarded 
as the chief representatives of classical scholarship among 
statesmen. It was known, or believed, that Radicals 
looked with an evil eye on the Universities, and that in 
the lower strata of that party classical culture was 
thought to savour of aristocratic insolence. Of course, 
a number of young men just fresh from Oxford and 



202 TORY MEMORIES. 

Cambridge, or nearly so, and already enlisted on the 
Tory side, took up the challenge readily. Some of us 
contributed Latin verses to the " Horse Tennysonianas," 
a little volume highly commended by the late 
Mr. Calverley. Brandt translated the " De Corona " 
of Demosthenes. Several of our other members had 
distinguished themselves at one or other University. 
White was a Fellow of New College and first classman, 
and won the Latin Essay prize. Sotheby was a first- 
class man and gained the Latin verse prize at Charter- 
house and the English essay at Oxford. Powell, when 
elected to an open scholarship at Lincoln, wrote a piece 
of Latin prose which Mark Pattison said you could hardly 
distinguish from Cicero. I ran second for the Latin 
verse myself at Oxford. Frank Conington, a brother 
of the Professor, and Henry Wadham were Fellows 
of Corpus. Sotheby and Charles (now Sir Charles) 
Turner were Fellows of Exeter. Roberts of Jesus, now 
Sir Owen Roberts, and Clerk of the Clothworkers' 
Company, was also one of us, and so too was Lomer of 
Oriel, who, but for failing health, promised soon to be 
leader of the Western Circuit. He was a regular leader 
writer on the Spectator in its palmy days, and was a 
Liberal. But he was well read in literature, and a good 
talker on literary questions. A. G. Marten, for some 
years member for the town of Cambridge ; D. V. Durell, 
and Henry Fawcett, of Trinity Hall, afterwards Consul- 
General and judge in the Supreme Court at Constanti- 
nople, represented Cambridge. All these men, I think, 
except Durell, were either regular Tories or men who, 
if they did not call themselves by that name, were 
averse to calling themselves by any other. 

I had nearly omitted Gowen Evans, who, I think. 



TORY CLUBS. 203 

was a Tory when he joined the Club. He took honours 
in mathematics, but he went out to Melbourne as manager 
of the Argus, and came back a rabid Tory, for whom I 
wasn't half good enough. But by that time the Rambler 
had departed. The principal Ramblers who were not 
Oxford or Cambridge men were Charles, now Sir Arthur 
Charles, formerly a judge of the High Court, and after- 
wards Dean of Arches, who was educated at the London 
University and was a good scholar, as well as an ex- 
cellent lawyer. Next to him comes Button Cook, the 
well-known dramatic and art critic ; and last, but not 
least, R. A. Trevor, in whose veins it was whispered ran 
royal blood. 

Thus it will be seen we had a tolerably good mixture, 
and some very good conversation might have been 
heard in that upper room at Dick's, ahke on books, 
plays, and politics. I remember one or two keen con- 
tests between the Lake School and the Popian. The 
Irishmen, I think, were strictly Wordsworthian. 
Griffiths, whom I have not yet named, another Dublin 
man, afterwards Attorney-General at the Cape, was 
strong against Pope. Lomer, though a Liberal, de- 
fended him stoutly, and spoke highly of the eighteenth 
century school. I remember his saying that the old 
heroic metre, as written by them, was the noblest in 
the language. Brandt was a great Shakespearian. 
Durell was a formidable opponent on historical ques- 
tions. He had a knack of reading up particular points 
and then biding his time to come down on some man 
who spoke of them only from his general information. 
I only got the better of him on one or two occasions : 
once about Nelson and the Mediterranean Fleet, and 
once when he roundly asserted, and stuck to it, that 



204 TORY MEMORIES. 

the battle of Salamanca was fought after the siege of 
Burgos. But he generally came to an argument so 
well prepared that he was rarely caught tripping. 
Button Cook used to bring us all the theatrical news, 
which he often enlivened with some neat little wit- 
ticism. Sotheby was our Society member, and when 
he came in from some West - End party, faultlessly 
attired in evening dress. Cook likened him to Lord 
Glossmore in Money, and by that name he was 
known among us ever afterwards. He was a highly 
cultivated and accomplished man, and an article which 
he wrote on De Quincey in Fraser is one of the best 
accounts of that author that I am acquainted with, 
though De Quincey is one of my books and I have read 
most that has been written about him, and have written 
something myself. Sotheby once proposed that he 
should translate Remusat, and that I should do the 
political notes. I wish the design had been carried out, 
but it died away. 

Trevor, I should say, was, next to Ormsby, the most 
prominent member of the Rambler. His Toryism was 
unimpeachable, as became his ancestry. He was one 
of that good old school who are accustomed to say, 

" Let's have no nonsense," or perhaps " no d d 

nonsense " would be more like him. In theology he 
was not deeply read ; but his instincts kept him very 
straight. He regarded such books as " Essays and 
Reviews " as an utterly unprofitable waste of human 
ingenuity. He would have agreed with Dr. Johnson 
that " most schemes of political improvement are very 
laughable things." In a word, his philosophy was the 
same as that of honest Ben Winthrop in " Silas Marner," 
who said to Macey, tailor and parish clerk, who was apt 



TORY CLUBS. 205 

to be critical, " Ah, Mr. Macey, you and me are two 
folks. When I've got a pot of good ale I hke to swaller 
it, and do my inside good, 'stead o' smelling and staring 
at it to see if I can find faut wi' the brewing." He 
agreed with the Catechism, though not altogether satis- 
fied with the station in life in which he found himself, 
as he thought Government treated its servants rather 
scurvily. Yet, I believe, he did his duty there as effi- 
ciently as if his pay had been doubled. He considered 
that his duty towards himself consisted in getting as 
much good out of this life as he possibly could — good 
meaning with him, as Emerson says it means with 
Englishmen in general, good to eat. He had a royal 
appetite, and as it was quite contrary to his theory of 
life to place any check upon it, he increased in bulk 
every day. But, bless you, Trevor did not care about 
that. I remember a lady who sat next him at dinner 
telling him she didn't like fat people, and then nervouslv 
correcting herself : " Oh, I don't mind fat men, you 
know." Trevor just looked over his shoulder at her 
with the peculiar chuckle which became him so well, 
and made no other answer. I have often envied men 
who have this particular gift. It helps them out of 
many situations, and often has all the effect of a suc- 
cessful repartee. 

I never heard of Trevor being out of countenance 
but once, and that was when he was on a walking tour 
in Ireland with Ormsby. They arrived late at a small 
country inn, which was quite full, and a bed was made 
up for Trevor in the bar. The next morning, at break- 
fast in the coffee-room, he heard one man say to another 
that he had often been told that the Irish kept their pigs 
in the house, but he never knew it till then. The fact 



2o6 TORY MEMORIES. 

is that Trevor's snore was something dreadful. I have 
heard Sala say that it almost frightened him. Trevor, 
who was conscious of this infirmity, of course knew what 
was meant, and kept his eyes steadily fixed on his plate 
till the subject dropped. 

Trevor was as hospitable as he was convivial, and 
among the good things of this life he included litera- 
ture. He could hold his own in conversation with 
journalists and reviewers, and one often met interesting 
people in his rooms, such as Shirley Brooks, Hood, Sala, 
who long remained under the impression that I wrote the 
" Christian Year," Stigant of the Edinburgh Review, 
Charles Austin of the Times ; and once I met Sir Squire 
and Lady Bancroft at lunch at his rooms in St. James's 
Street. He died at a comparatively early age, and I 
should say without an enemy in the world. His 
sallies were never personal, and he was acceptable in 
every class of society and among all sorts and condi- 
tions of men. As a specimen of his peculiar cynicism, 
I may quote what he said to a friend of mine about a 
mutual acquaintance who was thought to be living 
rather beyond his means. " Pooh ! " said Trevor ; 
" his income keeps him very well, and, of course, he 

won't be such a d d fool as not to die in debt." 

Thackeray ought to have met Trevor. He would have 
made something of him. He often reminded me of 
Lord Steyne. When Mrs. Rawdon tells Lord Steyne 
that they have ruined poor Briggs, Rawdon Crawley 
having borrowed all her legacy : " Ruined her ? " said 
his lordship ; " then why don't you turn her out ? " 
That was Trevor all over. Not that he would have done 
it. But such was his vein. It was a kind of talk highly 
reUshed in club smoking rooms, whether Whig or Tory. 



TORY CLUBS. 207 

Trevor also had a good voice, and was never un- 
willing to oblige the company with a song. His reper- 
toire was, however, more racy than select, and would 
have driven Colonel Newcome out of the room. His 
ditty was not always acceptable even to the very 
catholic tastes which prevailed at Dick's. In that and 
other things Trevor belonged to a school of conviviality 
with whom wit was wit in whatever language it was 
clothed. In the days when clubs were often only dining 
and drinking associations, it is probable that at an 
early period of the evening men ceased to be very nice 
about their jokes. I was once told by a retired Colonel 
who had mixed in that kind of company that at a club 
in Covent Garden he once heard the Chairman, a well- 
known viveur, tell the waiter at twelve o'clock at night 
to put half a dozen more of the '20 port on the table. 

George Danvers was a Rambler whose conversation 
smacked rather of the bush and the gold diggings than 
of the Cave of Harmony or the Back Kitchen. He was 
an Old Etonian. But for some reason or another he 
had taken to roughing it. He had been both in Australia 
and in California, and the conditions of life and the 
maladies to which men were exposed in those golden 
regions he described with a frankness which I cannot 
venture to imitate. He got off a murderer before a 
Yorkshire jury by making light of being knocked down, 
and asking the jury whether it was not a thing which 
every gentleman had to undergo in the course of his 
hfe. He was so elated with his success that he went 
out to try his fortune at the Indian Bar. But he 
never returned. Everything else failing, he went back 
to AustraUa, whence he wrote to say that his " ax " 
was his best friend, and there, I believe, he died. 



2o8 TORY MEMORIES. 

While in England he tried his hand at journalism 
and wrote some sporting articles for the Saturday Review, 
which were duly licked into shape by his friend the sub- 
editor. Danvers after a time began to kick at this kind 
of supervision, which he called " coming Molly over 
him," and announced his intention of making his friend 
acquainted with his feelings on the subject. The sub- 
editor was gifted with a large nose, and Danvers, when 
asked what he meant to say to him, replied : "I shan't 
say nothing. I shall come down on his old nut in a way 
that'll astonish him." This gentle intimation that his 
sub-editorial friend had gone too far was never, I 
think, adopted. 

Saturday was the Ramblers' guest night, when mem- 
bers introduced their friends. I think that once or twice 
we had the honour of Mr. John Morley's company. He 
was then living in the Temple. Greenwood came some- 
times, and also Dante Rossetti, whom I knew very well, 
and was always very glad to meet. Then we, most of us, 
had supper, which we never did on ordinary week days, 
and now and then Brandt, who rather fancied himself 
as an orator, would make a speech. But oratory was 
not encouraged, and so much the better. At the end 
of the session, usually about the middle of June, we 
had the club dinner, all dining together, sometimes 
at Dick's, sometimes at Cremorne, sometimes at the 
Albion, once frequented by Captain Strong. 

I ought to have made further mention at an earlier 
page of Henry Fawcett. Before he went out to Turkey, 
he was employed by the Conservative party in some 
capacity — I forget what, and this appointment was his 
reward. Whenever he revisited England, he always 
turned up at Dick's, and often told us some very 



TORY CLUBS. 209 

interesting things about the country. My readers may 
remember two naval officers being murdered about 
that time by Albanian shepherds. Fawcett said that 
it happened in this way. The two officers were out 
shooting, and thinking they might be trespassing, they 
sought to make friends with the two natives. By way 
of doing so they offered them some ammunition. This 
was an unfortunate mistake, and cost them their lives. 
To offer an Albanian gunpowder or cartridges was equiva- 
lent, he said, to a challenge, and so the shepherds under- 
stood it. Fawcett likewise had a great deal to say 
of the capital shooting he had in Albania, where he 
often went out without any fear of being molested, 
and had rare sport with the woodcocks. 

Some twenty years after the club had breathed its 
last, I invited all its surviving members to dinner at my 
own house, and we numbered as many as fourteen. By 
that time we had most of us cast off all traces of 
Bohemia, and settled down into sober, respectable 
citizens. Among the missing faces were some of the 
best-known and most popular members of the club — 
Brandt, Sotheby, Lomer, Conington, and others ; for 
twenty years is as bad as a charge of grape-shot fired 
into a group of friends. But we soon found ourselves 
back, as it were, in the old room at Dick's, and almost 
seemed to listen again to the silent voices. Let nobody 
suppose, however, that there was any sadness or melan- 
choly in the meeting. On the contrary, we had a very 
joyous evening, compared the Toryism of Lord Salis- 
bury with the Toryism of Lord Palmerston, and agreed 
that Lord Beaconsfield had a touch of both in his com- 
position. The old Irish members had disappeared, or 
we should have had some glowing denunciation of 
o 



210 TORY MEMORIES. 

Gladstone. But Trevor was there, a cynical epicure, 
and Charles, whose political allegiance never faltered, 
and whose humorous smile and shrewd glance were as 
bright and as keen as ever. And Marten came, and 
Durell, the warmest of friends and the most implacable 
of colloquial antagonists. Stokes and Turner were in 
India, Griffiths was at the Cape. 

We dissected the Conservative working man, at 
that time a much-talked-of personage. George Eliot 
and Jane Austen, TroUope and Thackeray, Macaulay 
and Froude had their respective partisans, and we did 
not separate till an hour worthy of the Ramblers. 
Since that time many more have been taken, and I 
don't think it would be possible to get up such a dinner 
now. Still, as Lord Beaconsfield said, reminiscences 
are a great comfort. In fact, one ought to lay them 
down in one's youth, to be enjoyed in our old age. But 
this means keeping a diary : a thing which I could never 
bring myself to do. I shall not therefore have to 
endure the oft-repeated sarcasm at the expense of such 
memories which is conveyed in the words, " fine old 
crusted." 

The Canning Club, of which a branch, I believe, still 
exists at Oxford, was founded about the year 1870, 
shortly after the decease of the Rambler. This was a 
strictly Tory club. It was supposed to represent that 
section of the Tories who heartily approved of the Reform 
Bill of 1867 and might be considered the more liberal 
wing of the party. It was hoped that it might form 
the nucleus of a club which should attract the rising 
generation of Tories, and was started, as I understood, 
with the approval of Lord Beaconsfield. Among its 



TORY CLUBS. 21 r 

original members were Lord Rowton, or Montagu 
Corry as he was then, George Russell, Edward Pember, 
Ormsby, and myself. What was wanted to make it 
a success in London was an organising chief, which we 
had not got. Four out of the five I have mentioned 
were aU busy men, and could not spare the time that 
was necessary ; and Russell, who might have had 
sufficient leisure, was not the man to devote himself 
to business unless he was obliged. 

The Canning was, I think, in some respects a mis- 
nomer ; for Canning was resolutely opposed to a demo - 
cratic suffrage, while the members of the club were 
most of them equally hostile to Continental Liberalism. 
However, the name served weU enough ; but the club, 
in London at all events, did not take on. We had some 
very pleasant meetings at the old Gray's Inn Coffee 
House, one of the best of the old London taverns, and 
now, alas ! with the rest of its vinous brethren, a memory 
only. We dined there two or three times with Russell 
in the chair, and devised various schemes for reorganis- 
ing the Tory party after the great defeat of 1868. But 
they ended in talk. The port wine was undeniable. 
George Russell and Jack Ormsby were enough by them- 
selves to keep any table alive, and Pember, who might 
then have been called, in Macaulay's words, " a stern, 
unbending Tory," used to describe his creed in much the 
same terms as Glover would have used in similar circum- 
stances : " Keep aU you've got." That was Toryism. 
He modified these opinions considerably as time went on, 
and I think eventually became a member of the Eighty 
Club. But if I wrong him I ask his pardon. The 
London Canning was never formally dissolved. But 
we were never numerous enough to give it any chance of 



212 TORY MEMORIES. 

permanence. Members ceased to attend, and it gradually 
dwindled away, though some ten years ago I remember 
Pember saying that he supposed it was then stiU in 
existence. 

The Cecil Club had better luck. It was founded 
about twenty years ago, and it meets every Tuesday 
night during the session of Parliament. This is an ex- 
cellent plan ; then the latest ideas of the political situa- 
tion and the latest views of the Conservative leaders 
are circulated through a large circle of younger politicians, 
and by them again passed on through other strata of 
society. In this way a kind of freemasonry is estab- 
lished among the members of a political party, than 
which nothing can be more useful in promoting united 
action. There is a club dinner once a month, and some 
well-known public man is usually invited to take the 
chair on these occasions. I have not been a regular 
attendant at these dinners ; but I have seen Mr. Balfour 
in the chair, and the Marquis of Bath, and Lord 
Colchester, and I believe that both the late Lord 
Goschen and Lord Ashbourne have been kind enough to 
preside. 

I myself have had the honour of occup5dng the 
vice-chair more than once. When Lord Colchester 
was in the chair, I had an opportunity of asking 
him a question to which I have long wanted to get 
an answer. In his father's diary it is stated that 
when Sir Henry Halford — I mean the physician — knew 
of the duel between the Duke of Wellington and Lord 
Winchilsea, he quoted the words attributed to Augustus 
when challenged to single combat by Antony : 

Quasrat certamen cui nil nisi vita superstes : 
Subdita cui cedit Roma, cavere meum est. 



TORY CLUBS. 213 

But his Lordship could not satisfy my curiosity as 
to where these hues can be found, nor have I as yet 
found anyone who could. 

I once sat next to Mr. Saintsbury at the Cecil. His 
" Life of Lord Derby " in the " Queen's Prime Ministers " 
series had not long been pubhshed, and as in it there 
were frequent references to myself, and my own bio- 
graphy of that statesman, we had some very interesting 
talk. He had called in question a statement of mine 
to the effect that an indiscreet speech of Lord Derby's 
before the General Election of 1865 lost him the Roman 
Catholic vote. I now had an opportunity of pointing 
out to him that he had mistaken the particular speech 
to which I referred, and that, as to the effect on the 
elections, I had my information from Mr. Disraeli him- 
self. Mr. Saintsbury went into the question with great 
good humour ; but I forget how it ended — whether he 
turned the tables upon me, or whether he did not. 

The plan of the Junior Carlton was suggested to 
Mr. Disraeli by Colonel Taylor in 1863, and at page 302 
of the second volume of " Memoirs of an Ex-Minister ' ' 
we find a letter from Mr. Disraeli to Lord Malmesbury, 
pointing out to him that a new club was required, to 
be " a central point for country solicitors, land agents, 
etc., who are winning and are to win our elections." 
The Carlton and the Conservative Clubs were so full 
that many men had a long time to wait for admission 
to them, and neither of them provided accommodation 
for exactly the class of men described by Colonel Taylor. 
The Junior Carlton and St. Stephen's are Tory clubs 
of quite a different order from those already noticed. 
The Junior Carlton has, I imagine, quite answered its 
purpose as described in Mr. Disraeli's letter ; but the 



214 TORY MEMORIES. 

Canning and the Cecil and the Rambler were meant to 
bring young men together, and to strengthen political 
principles by social ties. For this reason, although the 
Rambler was practically a Tory club, its doors were open 
to everybody — and as many converts are made, perhaps, 
by good fellowship as by either ^reading or reasoning. 
I was a member of St. Stephen's myself, and to a jour- 
nalist it was extremely useful. When I ceased doing 
regular work I left the club, not wanting two ; but down 
to that time I went there nearly every afternoon, as 
it was a good deal frequented by members of both 
Houses, being just at the corner of the Victoria Embank- 
ment by Westminster Bridge. Here I used often to 
see the late Lord Stanhope, Cecil Raikes, Lord Rowton, 
Lord Ashbourne, and Lord Randolph Churchill ; and 
thus I was sometimes enabled to write the night's leader 
without having to go down to the Standard office for the 
latest intelligence. 

Mr. Mudford was then editor of the Standard, and 
I always found members very ready to tell me anything 
that was worth knowing. From St. Stephen's it was 
a short step across to the lobby of the House, and thither 
I often went, not merely for the sake of seeing members 
or gleaning inteUigence, but also in order to watch 
the Httle groups collected there, and the stream of 
human life passing backwards and forwards between the 
inner and the outer lobby. I used to be particularly 
interested in what I took to be meetings between 
members and one or more of their constituents. It was 
good to note their countenances : on the member's 
would be sometimes a look of impatience, sometimes of 
real or assumed delight, sometimes of the courage of 
despair with which a man faces an irksome duty that 



TORY CLUBS. 215 

he would fain shirk if he could. The visitor's counten- 
ance would display equally varying emotions, and I 
used to amuse myself by conjecturing on what business 
they had come. I thought of the many disappoint- 
ments, the many weary hours of waiting, the many 
hopes deferred which that vestibule must have wit- 
nessed. I have not been there lately, but I am told 
that I should see rather a change in the personal element 
if I went there now. 



CHAPTER XV. 

TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 

The Press — The Seeleys, Father and Son — The New Quarterly — A Sub- 
sidy from the Porte — Musurus Pasha — The Pall Mall Gazette 
Founded — Mr. Frederick Greenwood — The County Government 
BUI— The Pall Mall Staff— A Wink from an Archdeacon— The 
Yorkshire Post : a Start under Difficulties — Joining the Staff of the 
Standard — Writing Leaders by Snatches — System of Payment — In- 
vited to Join the Times Staff— Mr. Mudford— Mr. Curtis— The 
Standard Changes Hands — Contributions to the Quarterly Review — 
— Its Editors — Founding of the National Review — Articles in the 
Fortnightly and in the Nineteenth Century — Sir James Knowles — 
Fraser's and Blackwood's — Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice and Junius 
— Mr. Sidney Low and Mr. Jeyes — Mr. William Blackwood. 

My memory, I am sorry to say, extends a long way 
backwards, into the journalism of the early 'sixties and 
a little further. I have already mentioned my connec- 
tion with the Press newspaper, and what I owed to Mr. 
Coulton, its editor, when I first joined it. But I have 
a little more to say about its subsequent history after 
Mr. Coulton's death. The paper was carried on, as 
before, by the leaders of the party, being edited by Mr. 
Haydon, a son of the painter. During this period, Mr. 
Lucas, who had been editor before Coulton, used to 
send us occasional articles, and every now and then 
some witty verses. Another member of the original 
staff was Madden, who had been on the Morning 
Chronicle, I think, when Black was editor. But we 
depended chiefly on Shirley Brooks for our humorous 
column, which was sometimes very good, sometimes 

216 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 217 

mediocre, and often, I am afraid, for lack of material, 
rather poor. The best of the articles were republished 
afterwards in a little volume called the " Coalition 
Guide." During the Indian Mutiny the articles attack- 
ing the old East India Company in no measured terms 
were written, I believe, by Colonel Outram. 

The year following Coulton's death the Press was 
sold to Mr. Newdegate, who naturally imparted a strong 
Protestant flavour to it. It was edited at first by Mr. 
Seeley, the publisher, a very clever old gentleman who 
had been a leader-writer on the Times in his day. I still 
continued on the paper writing reviews and miscellane- 
ous articles and acting also for a time as sub-editor. I 
used to find old Mr. Seeley a very amusing companion 
in the editor's room, and it was there that I made 
acquaintance with his distinguished son, John Seeley, 
who now began to write a good deal for the paper, both 
literary and political articles. Mr. Newdegate himself 
often came to the office, and used to chat with me about 
Leicestershire. He had often been to Wistow with the 
hounds, he said, and knew the Halford family. I re- 
member, too, that we once had a visit from a man whom 
I was glad to see, namely Mr. Stapleton, who had been 
Canning's private secretary, and wrote the " Life of 
Canning." He did not tell us anything in particular ; 
but it was something, I thought, to have shaken hands 
with one who had been so near the great statesman 
whose early death was almost as heavy a blow to the 
Tory party as Mr. Pitt's. 

Mr. Seeley did not continue to edit the paper very 
long. After him came Mr. Creed, who in turn was fol- 
lowed by Mr. Paterson, whose management was distin- 
guished by some articles on Mr. Lowe's once celebrated 



2i8 TORY MEMORIES. 

" Revised Code " which attracted a good deal of atten- 
tion at the time and were thought to have destroyed it. 
Soon after this my own connection with the paper came 
to an end. It lingered on for some little time, and 
finally was amalgamated with the St. James's Chronicle. 
It was sad to compare its end with the beginning. It 
had been intended originally to be only a temporary 
publication, on the lines of the Anti-Jacobin, its object 
being to write down the Coalition, which had provoked, 
of course, the bitter hostility of Mr. DisraeU. As long 
as he continued to preside over its management, it kept 
up its character, and though many thought it too per- 
sonal, none ever called it dull. But it is very difficult 
to keep up a publication of this kind at its original level. 
The Anti-Jacohin would have languished had it lived 
much longer ; and other periodicals could be named 
which, starting with exceptional brilliancy, have sub- 
sided by degrees to the level of mediocrity. 

While the Press was still in existence, I had some 
interesting and amusing experiences of journalism of 
quite a different character, and though my work was 
partially in support of a nominally Whig minister, it 
represented a Tory policy, which has not even yet accom- 
plished its full task. At that time, while the remem- 
brance of the Crimean War was fresh in the national 
mind, and Enghsh sympathies with Turkey were still 
warm, Mr. Haydon, whom I have already mentioned, 
had started a periodical with the title of the New 
Quarterly, which was naturally rather resented by Mr. 
Murray. However, that is nothing to the present pur- 
pose. The New Quarterly was specially devoted to the 
interests of Turkey, then in some trouble about the 
Danubian PrincipaUties, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Hke- 



AUTHOR'S NOTE. 

As the reference to the Morning Post on this page 
may give rise to the inference that that paper was 
either subsidised or controlled by the Turkish Ambas- 
sador or his Government, the author has much pleasure 
in stating, on the authority of Lord Glenesk, that there 
is not the slightest foundation for such a suggestion. 

To face p. 2ig. 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 219 

wise Servia. Haydon asked me to write articles for him 
on this subject, and used to come to my chambers in 
Gray's Inn with a bundle of pencil notes, which it was 
my business to reduce into the shape of an article. I 
did not know at the time where they came from ; but 
when Haydon left the Press and was made an Inspector 
of Factories, he had to leave London, and it became 
necessary either to abandon the New Quarterly or to put 
somebody else in communication with the Excellent 
personage from whom he drew his information. He 
accordingly handed the job over to myself. The pub- 
lication had a subsidy from the Turkish Government 
of £200 a year, and we were to divide the plunder. 

In due course I was presented to his Excellency the 
Turkish Ambassador, Musurus Pasha, and it was settled 
that I should visit him when required, and write such 
articles as he wished to have published. Of course, he 
was not satisfied with merely an article once a quarter, 
and it was arranged with Mr. Borthwick, then the 
Editor of the Morning Post, and now Lord Glenesk, that 
that paper would take leading articles from me in support 
of the Turkish policy of Lord Palmerston. I can't exactly 
say how often I was required to write — sometimes two 
or three times a week — sometimes, perhaps, not for a 
month. But as I was paid for each article by the Post, 
in addition to my share of the subsidy, I did pretty well. 
But without these honoraria I should have been more 
than half repaid by my interviews with Musurus, and 
the singularly humorous and vivacious style in which 
his instructions were communicated. He used to sit 
cross-legged on his sofa and dictate his views with a 
volubility which was sometimes perplexing, and mingled 
with jokes which were always good ones. He was, I 



220 TORY MEMORIES, 

think, most amusing when at a loss for the particular 
English word he wanted, for he neither spoke Enghsh 
fluently nor pronounced it correctly. He often had to 
faU back upon his French, and then I was mostly able 
to help him to the word he wanted. I could hardly 
keep my countenance when he pronounced " blood- 
shed " " brodspread." He was always in good humour, 
and seemed, in talking to me at least, to treat politics 
rather as a joke. He told me a great deal, however, 
which I was very glad to know, and which I have found 
very useful since. 

Scarcely was the Press in its grave when another 
paper sprang into existence, which was destined to 
be a great success. This was the Pall Mall Gazette, 
founded in the year 1865 by the late Mr. George Smith, 
but mainly indebted for the brilliant career which 
awaited it to Mr. Frederick Greenwood, who con- 
tinued to edit it down to the fall of Lord Beaconsfield's 
Government in 1880. I remember Greenwood coming 
to my chambers to talk about it. But I had nothing 
whatever to do with its birth, or management, and was 
at first only a very occasional contributor, for the Pall 
Mall Gazette did not begin as an avowed Tory paper. 
On the contrary, if obliged to take a name, it would have 
called itself Liberal. It did not support Lord Derby's 
Reform Bill in 1867, nor, as far as I can remember, did 
it take any decided line about either the Irish Church 
Bill or the Irish Land Bill. But it showed no mercy to 
the military and naval administration of the Liberal 
Government, and on the never-forgotten questions of 
Sir Spencer Robinson and the Ewelme Rectory the 
Pall Mall Gazette made its teeth meet in the eminent 
offenders. 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 221 

The Pall Mall, like so many other journals^ was best 
when it was aggressive. It supported the general prin- 
ciples of Lord Beaconsfield's Eastern policy to the last, 
but found fault with the want of vigour displayed in 
giving effect to them. It supported the Minister, 
but not the Cabinet ; and to such an extent did 
it carry its strictures upon the Government in the 
late 'seventies, that I remember hearing it said in a 
Tory country house that the Pall Mall had gone mad. 
I had nothing to do with all this. I continued to write 
reviews and miscellaneous articles for the paper ; but 
Greenwood and myself did not thoroughly agree upon 
political questions till after the establishment of the 
St. James's Gazette, though even then I did not do 
much political work for him. He favoured the Fourth 
Party, and used to repeat their jokes at the expense of 
Sir Stafford Northcote, and ridicule his gestures and 
attitudes, in a manner which he himself has probably 
forgotten by this time. 

At a later date I was able to join with Greenwood 
in attacking a Tory Government, for though as a party 
man I could digest a good deal, there were one or two 
cherished principles at the bottom of my heart with 
which my conscience would suffer no tampering. One 
was the maintenance of what Lord Beaconsfield used to 
call our "territorial constitution." I thought, and 
think stiU, that the landed proprietors in every Enghsh 
county make the best magistrates, and should of right 
have in their hands the conduct of all county business. 
I never hked the Prisons Bill brought in by Lord 
Beaconsfield's Government. But when Lord Sahsbury 
brought in his County Government Bill my party loyalty 
collapsed. On this question Greenwood quite agreed 



222 TORY MEMORIES. 

with me, and I wrote a succession of articles in the 
St. James's Gazette showing that the Bill was the wanton 
sacrifice of an excellent working system on the shrine 
of an abstract idea, a thing which had generally been 
thought repugnant to the English temperament. I 
pointed out that the Municipal Reform Act of 1834 "^^^ 
due to the gross abuses, jobbery, and corruption proved 
against the old system ; and that not a single charge of 
any kind was ever brought against the county magistrates 
at Quarter Sessions, a regimen which combined the three 
virtues of economy, honesty, and efficiency. Where 
is the economy now ? Greenwood thoroughly agreed 
with these views, and I enjoyed writing those articles 
immensely. 

Through the Pall Mall Gazette I came to know Fitz- 
James Stephen, who at one time was a pillar of the 
journal ; and my old friend, James Hannay, was enticed 
from Edinburgh to London by the promise of ;^6oo a 
year on the new journal. He had better, I think, have 
stayed where he was. But with Stephen, who, I have 
been told, made more by the Pall Mall Gazette than he 
ever made at the Bar ; with Hannay, whose witty 
articles relieved the more serious columns ; with Traill, 
who joined a little later ; and with Jefferies, who wrote 
" The Gamekeeper at Home," Greenwood was well set 
up ; and with his excellent judgment — for he was a 
born editor — success was a certainty. The well-known 
articles by the " Casual " gave the paper a fillip in 
its early days, no doubt ; but it would have made its 
way without Mr. James Greenwood's experiences, I 
feel sure. 

While the Pall Mall remained in Mr. Smith's hands 
we used to have a grand dinner every year at Green- 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 223 

wich, on the same scale as the Saturday Review dinner, 
at which I was sometimes present ; but afterwards, when 
the paper feU under other management, and became 
a Liberal organ, Mr. Greenwood, with aU his old staff, 
retired and started the St. James's Gazette, and then 
we used to have annual dinners of a different descrip- 
tion, to which the printing staff were invited, and at 
which contributors were expected to make speeches. 

Greenwood did not always get on well with his con- 
tributors. He fell out with James Hannay, though 
perhaps that was rather Hannay' s fault than his own ; 
and also with Traill, who for a long time had been his 
right-hand man, and although in this particular case I 
think Greenwood was in the right, another man perhaps 
might have softened things down a little, and avoided 
a complete rupture. I never knew exactly why he gave 
up the St. James's Gazette, but I believe that it was 
owing to some misunderstanding with one of its prin- 
cipal supporters. 

I myself always got on very well with him. I recog- 
nised his great abiUty as an editor, and never objected 
to his amendments, or resented his refusal of an article. 
In discussing a subject with him beforehand, you were 
sure of being met with sound judgment and a nice ap- 
preciation of those shades of difference which make an 
article acceptable or the reverse to any particular jour- 
nal. When he started the Anti- Jacobin I continued to 
write for him ; but after the stoppage of that weU- 
intentioned Tory effort, I almost lost sight of him. 
With him and his two daughters, while they hved in 
London, we were on visiting terms. They used to dine 
with us and we with them. In those days he was 
a very good talker, and was much better read in 



224 TORY MEMORIES. 

English literature than many people gave him credit 
for. Besides this, he had seen and known so many 
famous and interesting persons, that his conversation 
never lacked colour. I remember very well dining at 
his house in Kensington nearly twenty years ago, 
when we remained in the dining-room after the Miss 
Greenwoods had retired. The other guests, who were 
all men, gradually dropped off one by one, till Green- 
wood, Sutherland Edwards, and myself were the only 
three left. We smoked and drank whisky-and-soda 
in moderation ; but the conversation was so absorbing 
that we sat on and on without giving a thought to 
the time, till on going out at the hall door, Edwards 
and myself found it was broad daylight and five o'clock 
in the morning. 

It was in the 'sixties, somewhere about the time that 
the Pall Mall was launched, that Archdeacon Denison 
brought out a weekly paper styled the Church and State 
Review, to which I was invited to contribute. He has 
given an account of it in his " Notes of My Life." I 
was glad to serve under him. It was a pleasure to be 
in his company. He was a very handsome man, tall, 
and with a stately presence, but with a humorous twinkle 
in his eye withal, which robbed his remarks on political 
or ecclesiastical opponents of all their bitterness. He 
was always dignified, but never stiff, and though my 
readers may think it a vainglorious boast, I can assure 
them it is strictly true that he once winked at me. As 
Short, in " The Old Curiosity Shop," said when little 
Nell called him " Father," " I thought I should ha' 
bust." 

To be winked at by an Archdeacon, and such an 
Archdeacon too, more than repaid my Tory devotion to 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 225 

the Church. Don't tell me that a nod is as good as a 
wink. I may have thought so once ; but I have known 
better ever since that memorable day when I parted 
from the Archdeacon in Palace Yard. 

In the year 1866 it was determined to start a Conser- 
vative daily at Leeds. I think the projector appHed 
to Hamber, who was then editor of the Standard, to 
recommend someone to undertake the management of 
the new paper. He mentioned it to me, and, without 
engaging to take the editorship, I said I would go down 
to Leeds and see how matters stood. I found the 
committee which had been appointed for the purpose 
to consist of very pleasant, hospitable gentlemen, and I 
agreed to stay and help in the preliminary labours, 
neither few nor easy, incidental to the issue of a new 
daily paper. I found the shrewd Yorkshiremen with 
whom I had to deal thoroughly liberal in money matters, 
most courteous and friendly in private, but quite dis- 
posed to get full value for their outlay, and not always, 
for want of experience, quite able to appreciate the 
difficulties with which I had to contend. 

My principal work was the formation of an editorial 
staff, and as the materials for it did not exist, or only 
to a limited extent, upon the spot, they had to be looked 
for in London. I could not be in two places at once, and 
nobody knows better than the editor of a daily paper 
how necessary it is to make arrangements with writers 
or others who are to be permanent members of the staff, 
by personal interviews and not by letter. During my 
fl.5dng visit to London I did the best I could. I secured 
them a capital sporting correspondent in Mr. Ashley, the 
" Asmodeus " of the Standard. I got them, instead of 
myself, a resident editor, who had considerable experi- 



226 TORY MEMORIES. 

ence in provincial journalism, who was well read in 
Parliamentary history, an Oxford man, and a scholar 
who could write in a popular as well as a forcible style. 
I engaged two leader writers for them in London : one 
who already was, and one who was soon to be among the 
foremost journalists in London ; and I still had to find 
some competent man to fill the place of London cor- 
respondent, to which great importance was attached 
by the Leeds Committee. I tried in various quarters. 
But there was always a screw loose. Sometimes the 
would-be correspondent stood out for outrageously 
high terms ; sometimes I had my doubts whether he was 
in a position to secure the kind of information which a 
London correspondent is expected to supply. The time 
was growing short, and at last I had to do it myself. The 
final arrangement, then, when I returned to town to 
take charge of the London department, was that I should 
supply two London letters and two leaders a week ; 
that James Hannay should supply one leader and 
H. D. Traill another. Two were to be written in the 
office at Leeds. I forgot to mention that I also found 
a name for the paper, and christened it the Yorkshire 
Post. 

When I left Leeds a fortnight before the first number 
appeared everything seemed to be settled. My old 
Oxford friend, who had taken the editorship, did not 
doubt that he could carry out the part assigned to 
himself. Hannay and Traill I equally beUeved that 
I could trust. The only weak point in the arrangement 
seemed to me to be the London letter, which I had 
been obliged to take upon myself. It was work which 
I disUked very much, and for which my tastes and habits 
did not at all quahfy me. The London correspondent 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 227 

must be a man who is both able and wilUng to spend 
his days and nights in the collection of social gossip, 
political rumours, literary intelligence, and anecdotes 
appertaining to aU three. He must waylay Members in 
the Lobby and buttonhole likely informants at his 
club, or wherever else he can find them ; have the 
entree to fashionable drawing-rooms, and be intimate 
with actors and actresses. If he does not possess oppor- 
tunities for acquiring the valuable information which is 
so grateful to provincial palates, he must at least be 
believed to possess them, and with the aid of a powerful 
imagination, he may without much difficulty persuade 
people that he really does. He may invent a few scan- 
dalous stories simply for the purpose of contradicting 
them, thereby showing to what superior sources of in- 
formation he has access. He may announce that mar- 
riages which have never been dreamed of are not to 
come off, and that Cabinet changes, the reports of which 
he has invented, have been postponed. All this he may 
do, and nobody wiU take the trouble to contradict him, 
or if they do it will only advertise him all the more, and 
cause his paper to be more eagerly sought after. For, 
be it noted that the thousands of readers who delight 
in this species of composition care very little whether 
it is true or false. They probably, as a rule, think it 
neither the one nor the other ; but it amuses them for 
the moment. Some of it must be real, they think ; and 
to be brought for a few minutes into contact with circles 
about which the British middle class is insatiably curi- 
ous is an enjoyment which they are quite wiUing to 
pay for. 

I knew that I could not provide it for them. I was 
not up to Mr. Chuckster in " The Old Curiosity Shop." 



228 TORY MEMORIES. 

But some kind of letters had to be written and my two 
leaders besides, in addition to the literary work which 
I had in hand. Judge, then, what was my horror when, 
two days before the paper was to come out, I had one 
letter from Hannay to say that he couldn't write, and 
another from the editor at Leeds to say that they could 
do nothing at their end, and that the other two leaders 
must be furnished from London. I had no time to look 
out for other contributors. Traill came to the rescue 
hke a man, and by superhuman exertions we pulled the 
waggon out of the rut. But it was idle to expect that a 
paper brought out under these difficulties should be all 
that a first number ought to be. I did not blame the 
committee for complaining of it, but only for putting 
the saddle on the wrong horse. It was supposed to be 
all my fault, and I soon saw it was useless to repeat the 
facts to men who had got only one idea into their heads, 
who knew nothing whatever about journahsm, and 
could not, perhaps, have fully understood my case even 
had they been willing to listen to it. However, we did 
not part company over that job, and I continued on 
good terms with them for some years. I soon got rid 
of the London letter, and continued to send them two 
leaders a week for nearly ten years longer. The York- 
shire Post became a great Tory paper, and in spite of the 
little fiasco which occurred on its opening day I still 
regard it with a paternal feeling and am proud of the 
share which I took in building up its fortunes. 

Among the pleasant acquaintances which I then made 
were Mr. George LasceUes, a brother of Lord Hare- 
wood ; Mr. Charles Tennant, of Scarcroft ; and Lord 
Nevill, the present Lord Abergavenny, who then had a 
residence near Leeds. They were all active members of 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 229 

the committee ; and I spent a very pleasant day or 
two with each of them. George Lascelles had married 
Lady Louisa Murray, a daughter of Lord Mansfield ; 
and I found also in her ladyship the old Jacobite 
traditions in full force. She often spoke of the Duke 
of Cumberland as " the Butcher/' and no doubt if all 
was true that was reported of him, he deserved the 
name. Mr. LasceUes lived in the dower house near 
Harewood, and besides entertaining me there he took 
me with him on a fishing expedition up to Malham 
Tarn, a small lake among the hills, well-stocked with 
trout, which I thought the most delicious I had ever tasted. 

After the change of Ministry in 1868 the Globe became 
for a time the leading evening organ of the Tory party. 
Mr. Marwood Tucker was the Editor, and Mr. Montagu 
Corry was the interpres who brought us the news from 
Olympus. I wrote for the Globe for a short time, but 
I cannot recoUect much about it. I don't know whether 
I ought to style my recollections of the Parliamentary 
work which I did for the Graphic a Tory memory or not. 
I think perhaps I may, as I fear I acted on Dr. Johnson's 
principle and took care that " the Whig dogs should 
not have the best of it." But my work was purely 
descriptive — a description of the debates as lively as I 
could make it, but not analysing the arguments of the 
different speeches. I used to like that work very much. 
I sat in the Reporters' Gallery, and heard many interest- 
ing " sets-to " between the leaders. However, it was 
just about this time that I was placed on the staff of 
the Standard, which left me little time for other news- 
paper work. 

About this time, too, a dinner was given to a number 
of Tory journalists at the expense, I suppose, of the 



230 TORY MEMORIES. 

Carlton, at the Star and Garter at Richmond. Montagu 
Corry was there, and Lord Skelmersdale, and Mr. Bell, 
and we had a very jovial party. Montagu Corry, I 
remember, was taken ill in the middle of dinner, being 
seized with a fit of some kind, and fell off his chair, to 
the great alarm and anxiety of the whole company. 
But it turned out, fortunately, to be nothing serious. 
But I must carry my readers forward now into other 
departments of Tory literature, after some brief memo- 
ries of the Standard, which I joined permanently in 
the summer of 1872. 

When I joined the Standard the principal leader 
writer was Percy Greg, an able man, who usually wrote 
three or four articles a week. He had occupied this 
position for some years, and I remember Mark Pattison 
sa5dng that whenever he took up the Standard he was 
sure of finding at least one very good, well-reasoned 
leader ; and I will venture to say that nine times out 
of ten that was Percy Greg's. At this time Mr. John- 
stone was Editor, in succession to Captain Hamber, who 
had retired. Three or four of us would go down every 
afternoon and wait in a little ante-room till we were 
summoned one by one to the Editor's presence, when our 
task for the day, if any, was arranged. At this time 
Mr. Johnstone's father, the proprietor of the paper, was 
alive, and he used to entertain the staff royally, either 
at his house on the river, which had formerly been, and 
now is again, Ranelagh, or at another place famous for 
its glass houses, which he had in Kent. After a year 
some misunderstanding arose between the father and 
son, which led again to a change of editors, Mr. Mudford 
being selected for the post. Under his management 
the paper rose rapidly in public estimation, and he was 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 231 

ably seconded by Mr. G. B. Curtis, the assistant-editor. 
Mr. T. H. Escott, Mr. Richardson Evans, and Mr. Alfred 
Austin were now the chief leader writers. Mr. Watts, a 
very forcible writer on foreign affairs, not being able, as 
I understood, to agree with Mr. Mudford, retired with 
some other members of the staff, who were equally un- 
able to accommodate themselves to the new regime. 
Foreign affairs now fell into the hands of the present 
poet laureate, who continued for many years to repre- 
sent the Standard upon all questions of interest con- 
nected with Continental matters. He was in frequent 
communication with Lord Salisbury ; and it was gener- 
ally allowed that on all subjects of this nature the 
Standard occupied a foremost place among the leading 
London journals. Austin used latterly to send up his 
articles from his place in Kent, and they generally arrived 
in Shoe Lane between ten and eleven o'clock. At other 
times he wrote at the office, and Curtis used to say of 
him : " Austin's the man for my money : give him 
three ideas, shut him up in a room, and in one hour 
you have your three paragraphs." Mr. Mudford seldom 
came down at night, and he and Curtis used to com- 
municate by telephone. Escott, when Parliament was 
sitting, used to come with the latest news from the House 
of Commons, bustling in in full evening dress, ready to 
expose the latest Liberal dodge or to extol with equal 
ability the latest Conservative riposte. He was a very 
clever writer, and very adroit in suggesting what it 
might not be expedient to say openly ; but he burned 
the candle at both ends, and brought on an iUness 
which prevented him from ever resuming that regular 
newspaper work which puts so severe a strain on 
both mind and body. 



232 TORY MEMORIES. 

I did not take up regular night work at the Standard 
till the year 1884, and kept it going for fourteen years. 
But before that I had to go down to the Reporters' 
Gallery to write on the debate, which often kept us up 
till two or three o'clock in the morning. It was the 
hardest work and the most unsatisfactory that I ever 
did. We used to write in one of the committee rooms 
where the reporters sat to transcribe their shorthand 
notes, and a messenger was in waiting from each news- 
paper to carry back their copy to the office. The leader 
writer — I speak only for the Standard— hdid to sit in 
the Gallery straining his neck to catch what was going 
on down below, and when he thought he had got enough 
material for a paragraph, he had to rush off to the 
committee room and write as fast as the pen could travel 
over the paper, hand his copy to the messenger, and then 
tear back to the Gallery to pester all whom he knew for 
some scraps of information as to what had occurred 
during his absence. This process had to be repeated 
several times before the article was finished, and what 
it would have looked like next morning had there been 
no one in Shoe Lane to fine-draw the edges and reconcile 
the contradictions, it is painful to consider. 

This system, however, did not continue long after 
Mr. Mudford's appointment. Henceforth articles on 
the debate of the night were written in the office. How 
well I remember my despair and horror when a whole 
sheaf of " flimsy " would be flung down on the table before 
me, perhaps as late as half-past eleven or twelve, the 
article having to be finished by half -past two. To plod 
through that mass of matter, get anything hke a clear 
idea of its contents, and then write a column of com- 
ment all in a little more than a couple of hours was a 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 233 

job which even now I can scarcely understand how I 
accompUshed. 

It was a pleasant drive home on a summer night 
down the Embankment, or rather I should say morning, 
for the day was often dawning before I reached my own 
door ; but as I leaned back in my hansom I had not 
even the compensation which is yielded by the conscious- 
ness of work well done, however difficult or laborious. 
I used to torture myself all the way by reflecting how 
much more forcibly this or that argument could have 
been put, how much more vividly such and such a point 
could have been brought out, how much more neatly 
some particular sentence might have been constructed. 
These bitter reflections were too often justified by a 
sight of the paper next day ; and though my night 
leaders were rarely blamed and often praised by the 
editor, and though the general public perhaps never 
noticed the kind of flaws which so distressed myself, 
I could not shut my own eyes to their existence, or 
derive the slightest pleasure from reading over an article 
in which they occurred. When I went down at night I 
had, of course, to take my chance as to what the subject 
for the leader might be. At other times the subjects 
usually allotted to myself were Church questions, and 
questions of constitutional or party history. When 
the Ritualistic controversy was at its height, in the 
days of Tooth, Dale, and others, I wrote all the Standard 
leaders on these cases, and they had the good fortune 
to attract the approval of Dean Lake of Durham. But 
then I had the invaluable assistance of the present Sir 
Arthur Charles, who at that time was almost always 
engaged as counsel for the defence. He kept me straight 
on all points of law ; and as I had in early Ufe taken 



234 TORY MEMORIES. 

a great deal of interest in these questions^ I wrote, I may 
say, with knowledge. 

In my articles on Welsh Disestablishment I was 
much assisted by Canon Bevan, of St. David's, and on 
some later Ritualistic questions I had the honour of 
being instructed by Bishop Creighton, who said that, let 
the bishops do what they would, he despaired of coming 
to terms with the extreme men. " We offer to meet them 
more than half way," he said, " but they won't be met." 
I was charmed with Bishop Creighton. He reminded me 
a little by his manner of Archdeacon Denison. He was 
a tall man, too ; but he fell away down below. I think 
he had the thinnest legs of any man I ever saw, except 
the fourteenth Earl of Derby. 

My connection with the Standard terminated early 
in 1906, having lasted nearly thirty-four years. It is 
one of my most agreeable memories. I liked the work. 
I liked the company, of whom more presently. And I 
liked the pay, though latterly, when I gave up the 
night work, in 1898, it of course diminished. The 
annual dinner, which was supposed to be one given 
by the printing and publishing staff to the editorial 
staff, was always a great success. The last two or three 
that I attended took place at the Crystal Palace. All 
the leading contributors were expected to speak, and 
some of the others also. I know I said something once 
in one of my speeches about the badness of my hand- 
writing, which I couldn't always read myself. One of 
the compositors said plaintively, " Mr. Kebbel says he 
can't always make out his own handwriting. No more 
can't we." This remark, which I was fooUsh enough 
to repeat, is frequently quoted against me by those 
who ought to know better. 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 235 

One advantage of the Standard system was that you 
were paid for your articles as soon as they were sent in. 
Leaders would naturally be used at once ; but reviews 
and biographies were often, especially the last, kept 
over for a long time, and on most other papers — I almost 
think on all— you had to wait till they were published 
before you saw your money. The Tory Standard was a 
bright exception to this rule, which, however convenient 
to proprietors, might under certain circumstances work 
the greatest injustice to contributors. I remember once 
pointing this out to Mr. Buckle, who at once acknow- 
ledged the truth of what I said. He had asked me to 
write the biography of Mr. Gladstone for the Times 
ready for the day when that great man should be taken 
from us, and every now and then he returned me the 
MS. to be brought up to date. At length I said to him : 
" You see, this has been going on a long while. Mr. 
Gladstone keeps in perfectly good health. Suppose he 
outlives me, which is quite possible : I shall have written 
this biography for nothing." As I say, he saw the 
situation at once, and sent me a very handsome cheque 
the next day. 

I did a good deal of literary work for the Times 
under both Delane and Chenery, but these contribu- 
tions would hardly come under the head of Tory 
memories. Chenery proposed to me to join the Times, 
but required as a condition of discussing the sub- 
ject that I should leave the Standard first. This I 
declined to do, for I might not have come to terms 
with Chenery, and then I should have been left out in 
the cold. Besides, the Standard had always treated 
me very well, and in some respects indulgently, and I 
did not like the thought of turning my back upon them, 



236 TORY MEMORIES. 

or of ceasing to write openly for the Tory party, to whom 
I was bound to beheve I was doing some service. 
Again, I think the work on the Times would have 
been harder, and as I wasn't getting younger, I thought 
I might perhaps break down. 

Other men connected with the Times whom I knew 
well were William Stebbing and Samuel Lucas, who each 
in turn acted as literary editor of the paper. Lucas I 
have already mentioned as a former editor of the Press. 
He was, of course, a Tory, a most genial and gentlemanly 
man, and when the Conservatives came in in 1858 he 
expected something very good from them. He had been 
instrumental in arranging the coalition between the 
Radicals and the Tories against the Conspiracy to 
Murder Bill, when an amendment moved by Mr. Milner 
Gibson was carried against the Government by a 
majority of nineteen. Lucas, however, was disap- 
pointed. He had run down the game, but he did not 
get even the jackal's share. He was offered something — 
a distributorship of stamps, I believe, an office now 
extinct, but worth at that time £600 to £800 a year. 
Lucas, however, would have had to leave London if he 
had taken it, and this he declined to do. 

Of Johnstone, for some time Editor of the Standard, 
I have nothing more to say except that he was a cheerful 
and courteous person, whom it was easy to get on with. 
He was an Oxford man, and at one time a Fellow of 
St. John's. But he was not, I should say, specially well 
qualified for the post which his father conferred upon him. 
Mudford, on the contrary, was admirably fitted for such 
work. Nobody is perfect, either personally or officially, 
and Mudford sometimes both gave offence and took 
offence when none was intended. This caused at times 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 237 

some friction with his contributors ; but I don't know 
that it ever did any real harm. It would have been all 
the better if Mudford could have overcome his dislike 
of Society. But he would go nowhere, and he told 
Lady Jeune, who pressed him repeatedly to visit her, 
and actually sought to dig him out of his house in 
Addison Road, that he did not want to have said to 
him, what Lady Holland said to Macaulay, " I thought 
you were thin, and you are fat ; I thought you were 
witty, and you are dull," etc. But the editorial chair 
was his throne. There he was in his element — a great 
editor — the greatest, perhaps, with one exception of 
the Victorian age. 

I never got to be on terms of very close intimacy 
with Mr. Mudford. I did not very often even see him. 
But in his communications with me he always expressed 
himself in the most friendly terms, which I am sure were 
perfectly sincere. When he gave up the editorship, he 
wrote me a letter, which I have carefuUy preserved — so 
carefully, indeed, that I cannot find it — signifying in the 
handsomest terms his sense of my services and his regret 
at the severance of our intercourse. He was a kind- 
hearted — nay, a warm-hearted man — in reality, though 
his manner was often cold and a trifle constrained, aris- 
ing, I often thought, from nervousness rather than from 
any want of real sympathy. 

Mr. Curtis I saw almost every day. He was a very 
cheerful and genial official. On Mr. Mudford's retire- 
ment he succeeded to the editorship, which he held till 
November, 1905, when the Standard passed into the 
hands of Mr. Pearson, and Curtis retired from the stage. 
The change came upon all of us very suddenly. The 
first I knew of it was from an announcement in the 



238 TORY MEMORIES. 

Standard to the effect that on that day the transfer 
would take effect. When I went down to Shoe Lane in 
the afternoon I found that Curtis had only been told of 
the transaction the day before. We were naturally all 
very much astonished. Mr. Curtis went away at once, 
Mr. Sidney Low and Mr. J eyes remained. But the 
literary and biographical department, which branches 
had been latterly my chief sphere of usefulness, were 
reduced to such small dimensions that I was not at all 
surprised to find that my services were no longer in 
requisition. Night work I could no longer do, and 
almost all the leaders were thenceforth written at night. 

I never knew what induced Mr. Johnstone to part 
with the paper, which was a very valuable property, and 
had shown no signs of a declining circulation. I can- 
not say, as I should like to do, that the transaction was 
carried out with much consideration for members of the 
staff, for whom little thought seems to have been shown 
by those who had so long profited by their services. I 
am sorry to say this of a Tory newspaper, especially as 
it is the last word I have to say about Tory journalism 
proper. I must now turn my attention to the Tory 
periodicals, or periodicals in which I wrote as a Tory. 

My first article in the Quarterly Review had for its 
subject an excellent specimen of an intellectual Tory, 
one whose creed drew nourishment from mental science 
as well as from practical interests and historical experi- 
ences : I mean De Quincey. I rather think that Elwin 
was the editor who accepted this article, though Mac- 
pherson had succeeded him before it was published. 
This was in 1862. If I had to write the article again, 
I don't know that I should say all that I said then. I 
was greatly in love with metaphysics at that time, and 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 239 

full of Oxford logic, and I remember that when I first 
joined the Press, and Coulton, my editor, wrote an 
article highly in praise of Paley, I had the audacity to 
remonstrate with him, and did, indeed, touch him so 
nearly that he actually wrote eight closely-written sides 
of notepaper in reply. I was under the influence of the 
same set of ideas when I wrote the article on De Quincey, 
and made great play, I remember, with the yvcopifioyrepov 
ri/uv and the ^uo-et <yvcopiiMOTepov, a right understanding 
of which I professed to think essential to any true 
conception of Toryism. That there was much youth- 
ful pedantry in all this I shall willingly allow, but 
after all, it was but a crude attempt to find a basis 
for Toryism in political philosophy. I was groping in 
the dark, perhaps, after something in itself desirable, and, 
at all events, I had the satisfaction of seeing my article 
fiU the place of honour in that number of the Quarterly. 

I wrote a few more articles while Mr. Macpherson 
continued editor — one on Lord Liverpool among them. 
But with the accession of Dr. Smith to that high office, 
I think I may say that I became a regular contributor. 
I had been led by " Coningsby " and " Sybil " to study 
the history of the Tory party in the eighteenth century, 
and I wrote for Dr. Smith a series of articles on the 
statesmen of that era, from the accession of Queen Anne 
to the death of George III. I had begun with Boling- 
broke in Fraser's Magazine, when Froude was editor; 
and I continued the series in the Quarterly with Lord 
Godolphin, Lord Peterborough, Sir Robert Walpole, 
Lord Carteret, and the Duke of Grafton. With the 
exception of Sir Robert Walpole, these were all Tories 
— that is, they all in different ways and at different 
times endeavoured to break down that party system 



240 TORY MEMORIES. 

which the Whigs had estabhshed, and to secure greater 
liberty to the Crown. I continued the subject in other 
periodicals as well. But I also contributed to the 
Quarterly two or three articles on the politics of the 
day — one on " The Difficulties of Good Government " 
in 1888, and another on " Coalition " in 1893. Both of 
them were suggested by the same phenomena — the 
desperation, namely, with which daring statesmen 
will play the game of party, when they see no pros- 
pect of accession to power by any ordinary means. 
There is a scene in " The Heart of Midlothian " which 
exactly illustrates my meaning : " Whistler, do the 
cords hurt you ? " says Jeanie to the youthful prisoner, 
who was known only by that name. " Very much." 
" But if I were to slacken them, you would harm me ? " 
" No, I would not — you never harmed me or mine." 
" There may be good in him yet," thought Jeanie ; " I 
will try fair play with him." She cut his bonds, he 
stood upright, looked round with a laugh of wild exulta- 
tion, clapped his hands together, and sprang from the 
ground, as if in transport on finding himself at liberty. 
He looked so wild that Jeanie trembled at what she had 
done. " Let me out," said the young savage. " I 
wunna unless you promise." " I'll make you glad to let 
us both out," and so saying, he seized the Ughted candle 
and threw it among the flax, which was instantly in a 
flame. For " let us out " substitute " let us in " and 
you have the political situation. 

Burke says much the same about political gamblers. 
Of coalitions all are not bad. It depends on the motives 
and on the principles of the coalescing parties. The 
coalition of Lord Nottingham and the Whigs in Queen 
Anne's reign to secure the censure of the Peace, the 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 241 

coalition of Whigs and Tories, diametrically opposed to 
each other on the two leading questions of the day, the 
American War and the Royal Prerogative, in order to 
crush Lord Shelburne, are examples of such transactions 
in their worst form. Other combinations of the same 
kind may usually be accepted as consistent with the 
recognised code of Party warfare, and sometimes, 
indeed, are unavoidable. 

In the article on Walpole, I remember I had called 
in question some assertion of Mr. John Morley's relative, 
I think, to the Craftsman, which that gentleman rather 
resented, and in return drew a fancy picture of this and 
other articles which, I have every reason to suppose, 
was intended as a representation of my own. It was 
natural enough, but it was not correct. I continued my 
articles on Eighteenth Century Tor3dsm in the Fort- 
nightly Review and in the National. In the former 
appeared " The Tory Party under Wyndham and 
Bolingbroke " ; in the other were introduced notices 
of Shelburne, North, and Pitt ; and at the suggestion of 
Mr. Courthope, who then edited the National Review 
conjointly with Mr. Alfred Austin, I prolonged the series 
down to the death of Mr. Disraeli in 1881. 

When it became necessary to appoint a new editor 
to the Quarterly Review in succession to Dr. Smith, I 
heard that my own name had been put forward as a fit 
and proper person to fill the vacant chair. When these 
" Memories " were projected, I asked Mr. Murray what 
foundation there was for this report. He replied that 
there was none at all, that Mr. Rowland Prothero had 
been fixed upon as the new editor long before, and no 
other man had ever come into competition with him. 
It is very curious how such rumours get afloat. Not a 

Q 



242 TORY MEMORIES. 

syllable had ever been said to myself on the subject, 
nor had I ever given a thought to it. 

When Mr. Prothero was installed, a dinner was given 
in his honour, to which I was invited, and I remember 
that in returning thanks for his health, he discussed 
at some length the advantages and disadvantages of the 
anonymous system, declaring himself strongly in favour 
of it. But some time afterwards, when his brother, 
George Prothero, became editor, he began to make 
exceptions to the rule, and in the last article which I 
wrote for the Quarterly, on the Creevy Papers, I was 
invited to put my name to it, which I did. There was 
no compulsion ; but in that number (January, 1904) 
six articles out of the twelve were signed. Two other 
articles which I wrote at that time with a strong Tory 
bias were on the Waverley novels and " Studies of the 
'Forty-five," and with this last I interwove some of the 
Jacobite stories for which I was indebted to Lady Jeune. 

When the National Review was established in 1883 
its birth was celebrated by a dinner at which Mr. Alfred 
Austin, Mr. Courthope, Lord Salisbury, Mr. Balfour, 
Mr. Raikes, and, I think, Mr. Mallock, were present. 
It was then that I first made the acquaintance of 
Mr. Balfour. I sat next him at dinner, and I remember 
the conversation turned a good deal on old Oxford and 
Cambridge stories, of which I was not surprised to find 
that he had a newer assortment than I had. At that 
time he had recently distinguished himself by a very 
spirited speech on the Kilmainham Compact, and was 
recognised as a rapidly rising politician. In the follow- 
ing year he was instrumental in arranging with Lord 
Hartington the compromise on the Reform Bill which 
was carried out in 188=5. To the first volume of the 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 243 

National Review he contributed two very interesting 
articles on Bishop Berkeley. Lord Lytton, Lord Car- 
narvon, Cecil Raikes, Earl Percy, and Clare Sewell 
Read were among the earliest contributors. And I 
know the extent to which the new review was patronised 
by the leaders of the Tory party occasioned some little 
soreness in quarters where similar recognition and assist- 
ance had not been experienced, though the services 
rendered were at least equally meritorious. 

It was at Mr. Courthope's suggestion, as already 
stated, that I wrote in the National Review the articles on 
"Tory Prime Ministers," afterwards republished with the 
misleading introductory title, " A History of Toryism," 
which, of course, they were not. Lord Carnarvon thought 
the two articles on Sir Robert Peel the best of them. My 
own favourite among them has always been the article 
on Pitt which appeared in an early number of the 
National Review, and another which was published much 
later in 1892, being a review of Lord Rosebery's " Life 
of Pitt." In whatever I have written about Mr. Pitt 
I have always tried to bring into prominence his moral 
greatness. In this he stands alone among English 
Ministers, whether Whig or Tory. Lord Rosebery 
made some mistake, I think, about the composition of 
the French and English armies during the Revolutionary 
war, which as a Tory I felt bound to notice. But what 
I said about Pitt I am vain enough to think may bear 
repeating here. My own father was turned thirty years 
of age at the death of Mr. Pitt, and he could well remem- 
ber the general grief, verging on despair, which it created. 

Thus lived and died William Pitt, the greatest Parliamentary 
statesman whom England has produced, if greatness is to be measured 
not merely by the genius of the individual, but by the quality of the 



244 TORY MEMORIES. 

circumstances in which his lot is cast, and the magnitude of the diffi- 
culties which he is called upon to confront and overcome. Chatham 
is a splendid figure in our annals ; but he never was, for he never 
had the chance of being, the one man upon whom, through long years 
of danger from both foreign and domestic enemies, a nation reposed 
with confidence ; whose removal from power was the signal for 
general despair ; whose restoration revived the public spirit as sun- 
rise renews the daylight ; and whose death was lamented by the 
tears not only of personal friends and political supporters, but of 
thousands who had never seen him, yet felt themselves reduced to 
sudden helplessness by the loss of their tried protector. 

This, after all, is only a feeble prose paraphrase of 
Scott's beautiful lines, which express exactly the same 

thing : 

Now is the stately column broke, 
The beacon light is quenched in smoke. 
The trumpet's silver sound is still, 
The warder silent on the hill. 

I never thought that either Lord Stanhope in his " Life 
of Pitt," or Mr. Disraeli in his interesting diagnosis of 
that illustrious statesman, much less Lord Macaulay in 
the " Encyclopaedia Britannica," did full justice to this 
aspect of Pitt's career. 

When the Fortnightly Review was edited by Mr. 
Morley, I wrote some articles for him, and he was pleased 
to say that he admired my writing when I had " a suf- 
ficiently large canvas." I confess I like plenty of room. 
As Johnson said of himself that he liked to fold his 
arms and have his talk out, so in writing I like to have 
it out with myself, and to follow up an argument to its 
logical conclusion. 

When Mr. Escott succeeded Mr. Morley in 1882, 
he proposed to give a dinner to the leaders of the Tory 
party, though hitherto the Fortnightly had not been 
avowedly a party publication. I remember meeting 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 245 

in the street Chapman, the pubUsher, who asked me if 
I did not think it a very good idea. Of course, I said 
yes, and I suppose he found the money, as Escott did 
give the dinner, and entertained Lord Salisbury, Sir 
Stafford Northcote, and some of their principal col- 
leagues at a sumptuous banquet, which I hope had the 
desired effect. 

Neither to the National nor to the Fortnightly were 
my contributions mainly poHtical. I wrote on sporting 
and Uterary subjects as well, about shooting and natural 
history, about Oxford, about Chawton and Jane Austen, 
about Gilbert White and Selborne ; but when I began 
to write for Sir James Knowles in the Nineteenth, I was 
practically almost restricted to pohtics. Mr. Knowles, 
as he was then, invited myself and one or two others, 
Oxford friends, to contribute ; and I remember one of 
them, a man of great humour, who, not being a public 
writer himself, was much pleased with the implied dis- 
tinction, considering what a future generation would 
say of us when they saw our names in the Nineteenth, 
and exclaiming with great glee : " ' Ah ! ' they'll say ; 
' they must have been men of mark : they must have 
been men of mark.' " Knowles, I think, regarded 
myself as a reasonably competent exponent of modern 
Toryism, and with sufficient knowledge of our Parlia- 
mentary history to be able to write on party politics 
when anything like a crisis or a novel situation occurred. 
For a long time almost all my articles bore on some 
phase of the party system. At times, of course, I took 
a wider range. An article, for instance, on " European 
Coalitions against England " appeared in May, 1896, 
and in a much earlier number of the Nineteenth I re- 
viewed, at Mr. Knowles's request, the political novels 



246 TORY MEMORIES. 

of Lord Beaconsfield. Ten years ago I wrote an article 
entitled " The Good Sense of the EngUsh People," and I 
mention it now because recent events have gone so far 
to justify it. I pointed out that this same good sense 
which had often intervened at critical periods with the 
best effect was liable to be confused by cross issues and 
subordinate controversies, which are now much more 
numerous than they used to be. " There is no saying 
what effect may be produced by the formation of a 
Parliamentary Labour Party appealing to the support 
of the artisans on general grounds without compelling 
their acceptance of any rigid code of articles. We know 
that the leaders of a party which has been returned upon 
general principles may afterwards use their power for 
the promotion of particular objects not originally con- 
templated by their followers, who, even if willing, are 
not always able to offer any effectual resistance." 
(March, 1895.) 

Such was my own prophecy just eleven years before 
it was fulfilled. 

Sir James Knowles was an indefatigable editor, and 
the result of his exertions was seen in the great popu- 
larity which the Nineteenth Century immediately com- 
manded. The last article which I wrote for him was on 
Conservative organisation and the agricultural labourer. 
I wished to point out that there was yet time for the 
aristocracy to say to the peasantry, " We will be your 
leaders." I shall have more to say about this in an- 
other chapter. The article was a good deal noticed, and 
an enthusiastic gentleman in Lincolnshire wrote to me 
to say that it ought to be reprinted as a pamphlet, and 
sent to every landowner in the kingdom. As he him- 
self is a large proprietor who has given much attention 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 247 

to the subject, his appreciation was worth something, 
but what he added was worth more as showing the diifi- 
culty of arousing the EngUsh country gentlemen to a 
sense of their situation, and of the dangers by which 
they are encompassed. He said he had made several 
attempts himself to induce the gentry to form some 
kind of combination for the purpose of supplying the 
peasantry with land, in order to prevent its being taken 
by force. But it was the voice of one crying in the 
wilderness. Nobody would take the trouble to go into 
the question : things would last their time, and so forth. 
So it is, so it has been, and so, I suppose, it always will 
be. It is too soon as yet, I hope, to say to the terri- 
torial class, " Your house is left unto you desolate." 
But if their eyes are not speedily opened to the signs of 
the times it will not be too soon much longer. 

I forgot to mention that in the Fortnightly Review I 
wrote an article styled, " The County System," caUing 
attention to the many merits of that system. But, 
unhappily, it did not prevent Lord Salisbury from 
introducing his County Government BiU. 

I knew something of Mrs. Riddell, the authoress of 
" George Geith." In the year 1866 she started a Tory 
magazine, and inaugurated it, as was then the universal 
custom, by a dinner to contributors. I dined at her 
house in company with James Hannay and many others 
who scented plunder ; but I am afraid there was more 
disappointment than satisfaction in the end. The title 
of the new periodical was the St. James's Magazine, 
and we all wished it success, for Mrs. Riddell was a very 
agreeable and handsome woman ; but there were too 
many monthlies of the old-fashioned stamp to allow room 
for another unless seasoned by some striking novelty. 



248 TORY MEMORIES. 

Several efforts were made to resuscitate Fraser. 
Mr. Froude took it in hand, and I had a talk with 
him one day when George Lawrence (Guy Living- 
stone) came in, whom I had never seen since the old 
Union days at Oxford, when he " fleshed his maiden 
sword," as he expressed it, on some luckless Radical 
undergraduate who had offended him. Froude, as I 
have said, fell in with my ideas about Bolingbroke and 
the Tories ; but he did not stay long on that magazine. 
Principal TuUoch, who succeeded him, was very hopeful. 
He spoke in one of his letters of having secured some 
very valuable contributors and very interesting articles. 
But it was no use. The old Fraser, the Fraser of Parker, 
the Fraser of Whyte-Melville, of Digby Grand, 
Kate Coventry, and " The Interpreter " ; the 
Fraser of " Friends in Council " and " John 
Halifax," was dead. It had once stood on nearly 
if not quite as high a level as Blackwood, and in 
the monthly notices of periodical literature which ap- 
peared in the newspapers of fifty years ago, they were 
always named together — Blackwood first and Fraser 
second, both on a higher platform than any of the other 
magazines. Blackwood has retained its place and re- 
tained its specialities. In a circular issued last December 
it is stated that " for ninety years Blackwood has been 
the same outspoken, hypocrisy-hating, pretence-exposing 
organ, and its individuality is as marked as ever ; " and 
this is quite true. It has an idiosyncrasy such as no 
other magazine can lay claim to. My own memory of 
Blackwood as a contributor goes back about five-and- 
twenty years, and during the whole of that period I 
have been, I may say, a fairly frequent contributor 
to the great Tory magazine. 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 249 

In the Monthly Review, established by Mr. Murray 
in 1901, I wrote last year (1906) an article on " County 
Magistrates," in which I pointed out some of the in- 
conveniences that might arise from the abolition of the 
old qualifications. I only mention this because I see 
that the present Lord Chancellor has already had reason 
to complain of the abuses which I then predicted. 

My personal acquaintance with men of letters and 
editors has not been very extensive. My old friend 
Coulton, who introduced me to political journalism, I 
have aheady mentioned. Dr. Smith, the editor of the 
Quarterly, I knew very well, too. He used to say that 
he liked to have articles from me in the summer, for then 
he knew he would have one article he could rely 
upon for the October number which would give him no 
trouble and not interrupt his holiday. This was a high 
compliment, much the same as Townshend, the editor 
of the Spectator, paid to Lomer, the Rambler. " Mr. 
Lomer's leaders," he said to a mutual friend, "are the 
only ones I never read before they go to press." Dr. 
Smith was a capital editor to get on with : under him 
one never had any trouble about proofs and revises, 
and second and third revises. He was a hospitable man, 
too, and I remember some pleasant parties at his house. 
I met there Dr. Rutherford, Headmaster of Westminster, 
and his wife, a very pretty and agreeable woman, whom 
I sat next to at dinner. As she was quite enthusiastic 
about the very gentlemanly appearance of the West- 
minster boys, I reminded her of the sobriquet by 
which Westminster boys were formerly known, and of 
what Dickens said about them. She knew both, but 
threw them off as inventions of the enemy, which they 
very likely were. 



250 TORY MEMORIES. 

At the same house I met Lord Edmond Fitz- 
maurice, and had some interesting conversations with 
him about Lord Shelburne, whose " Life " he had 
written. I asked him, in particular, whether he had 
ever heard that Mr. DisraeU had access to the papers 
at Lansdowne House, which he had used himself in 
his biography. I pointed out to him what I don't 
think he had remarked before : the singular coinci- 
dence there was between passages in " Sybil " and 
Shelburne's Autobiography. Shelburne here speaks 
repeatedly of the " false government " introduced by 
the House of Hanover, and says that in George IIL's 
time it was worn out. Mr. Disraeli says : " Lord 
Shelburne adopted from the first the Bolingbroke 
system — a real royalty in lieu of chief magistracy, a 
permanent alliance with France and a plan of commer- 
cial freedom. Lord Shelburne's idea was that the 
Crown should trust to the rectitude of its own measures 
to secure a general conviction of its good intentions, 
and under this conviction to restore the constitution." 
That is to say, there was to be no more party, and the 
King was to choose his own Ministers from among the 
best men of all parties. This in Lord Shelburne's 
opinion was " the old constitution " which was over- 
thrown at the Revolution. All through Lord Beacons- 
field's political writings we find this idea constantly 
recurring, and with such verbal similarity as to per- 
suade one that he must have seen or heard of these 
autobiographical fragments before he wrote " Con- 
ingsby " and " Sybil." Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice 
admitted that the coincidence was very striking, but 
said there was nothing known in the family of Lord 
Beacons field's having seen these papers. 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 251 

I also asked him about Lord Shelburne and Junius. 
Lord Shelburne said in the year 1805 that he knew 
Junius, and that the real author had never been named 
or even suspected. Sir Philip Francis had never been 
named before that date. But Lord Edmond Fitz- 
maurice did not seem to think that his grandfather 
meant Sir Phihp Francis when he said he knew 
Junius. 

In thinking of the editors I have known inti- 
mately, the joyous and cheery countenance of Sir J. 
Knowles at once rises up before me. I knew him when 
he lived at Clapham, before the Nineteenth Century was 
started. When I went more into Society than I do at 
present, I used to meet him everywhere. He was al- 
ways in evidence. Nobody ever saw Knowles sitting 
silent at a dinner table, or standing alone with his back 
to the wall at a reception. To the sterling qualities 
which made him so successful in business and in litera- 
ture, he added a fund of good spirits and sprightly 
small talk which never deserted him, and if you saw a 
group of men enjojdng a good laugh in the corner of a 
drawing-room, nine times out of ten you would find 
Knowles in the centre of it. He was what I should call 
a sympathetic editor, and if he refused an article, he 
always took care to show that he had considered the 
matter, and never wrote in the short and rather abrupt 
style in which some editors express their so-called 
regrets, etc. 

Of all the editors whom I have known personally, 
I knew Hannay the best. But during the years that he 
edited the Edinburgh Evening Courant, he, of course, 
lived in Edinburgh, and I no longer saw him two or three 
times a week. But his heart was in London all the time 



252 TORY MEMORIES. 

with his old associates^ in whose company he had so 
often heard the chimes, so often shared the tavern 
bowl, so often discoursed of great old houses, and 
great gentlemen ancient and modern, till the doors were 
closed. For such were his favourite subjects, and it was 
good to hear him talk of Pontius Pilate or Felix, " great 
Roman gentlemen," and wonder what such men really 
thought of Christianity. But, as with the old Scottish 
lawyer described in " Guy Mannering," the practice of 
mixing wine and revelry with serious business still sur- 
vived, so with Hannay, himself a Scotsman, the genial 
tradition usually occurred to him in explanation of 
any mischance in the C our ant ofiice. I used to send him 
leaders from London, and one night, I am told, he rushed 
into the room where several men were at work, hold- 
ing between his thumb and first finger about a third 
of a column. " We can't see the public on this," he 
cried. " Old K says the subject won't bear fur- 
ther expansion, which simply means that H is 

waiting for him at the Gray's Inn Coffee-house." 

Sidney Low, who edited the St. James's Gazette after 
Greenwood, had long been a friend of mine ; and after 
I left off night work at the Standard I think he took my 
place. I always thought him a very good writer of 
English prose, and his recent letters from India place 
him very high among the masters of the craft. With 
my old friend Mr. J eyes, who was assistant editor, I 
worked for many years in the most complete harmony, 
and always found him, at all times of the day and night, 
the same genial, cheerful, and amusing fellow work- 
man. It was in great measure owing to his encourage- 
ment that I undertook these " Memories," and I am 
indebted to him for many suggestions with regard to 



TORY JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE. 253 

the scope and manner of them. I had enjoyed so many 
opportunities of proving the soundness of his judgment 
in hterary matters that there is hardly a hint which he 
threw out which I have not more or less acted upon. 
I have reserved to the last any mention of Mr. 
William Blackwood, and it must be held to be for the 
same reason that the last place in a review or magazine 
is often the place of honour. I have always found him 
the best of friends and the best of editors. He takes 
infinite pains to give the best possible shape to his 
articles, and makes every allowance for contributors 
who may be writing from a distance or against time. 
The services which the Blackwoods have rendered to the 
Tory party should be gratefully remembered by all its 
members, high or low, and entitle their magazine to be 
bracketed with the Quarterly Review as one of the two 
great literary organs which have upheld the Conservative 
and constitutional cause in this country for nearly a 
century with equal ability, equal fidelity, and equal 
conscientiousness . 



CHAPTER XVI. 

TORY DEMOCRACY. 

Lord Randolph Churchill's Definition of Tory Democracy — What Lord 
Beaconsfield meant by it — Toryism in the Eighteenth Century — 
Peasantry and Gentry — Tory Proclivities of the Artisan Class — 
The Peasantry and " Methodies." 

" Tory Democracy " is, as I have explained elsewhere, 
a contradiction in terms — a solecism. " Democracy," in 
the proper sense of the word, means a form of government, 
not a class of the community. It would be rash to 
assert that it was never used in the latter sense by 
Lord Beaconsfield himself ; but it is, nevertheless, 
a very misleading use of the word. " Democracy," 
properly understood, means the government of the 
few by the many, the government of those best fitted 
to rule by those who are the least so. Lord Beacons- 
field never meant this, and it is impossible that he 
could have done, for Toryism means exactly the reverse. 
The definition of " Tory democracy " given in the 
" Life of Lord Randolph Churchill " may be a good 
description of Toryism, but certainly not of democracy. 
" Tory democracy " means, we are told, " ancient 
permanent institutions becoming the instruments of 
far-reaching social reform." Good ; but this is not 
democracy. If the representatives of the people in 
the House of Commons would only give up clamouring 
for the destruction of these ancient institutions, this 

254 



TORY DEMOCRACY. 255 

ideal, which was probably Lord Beaconsfield's own, 
might possibly be realised. But it is naturally the 
game of the Radicals to prevent any good un- 
derstanding being arrived at between the Tories and 
the people. When a Tory speaker on one occasion was 
beginning to be listened to by an excited Radical mob, 
a shrewd agitator, seeing that matters were not going 
well, said to a boy standing near, " Why don't you 
throw a stone at him ? " The boy was only too de- 
lighted with the mischief. The stone crashed through 
a window just behind the speaker's head, and the whole 
effect of his address was lost. Radicals who cherish 
the policy of destruction represent themselves to 
the people as the only party capable of effecting these 
" far-reaching social reforms," and then when they are 
returned to Parliament in adequate strength for that 
purpose, what becomes of our " ancient and per- 
manent institutions ? " They use the power which they 
gain by posing as social reformers for the purposes of 
political revolution. I don't blame them. The sincere 
Radical who sees the regeneration of England in the 
realisation of his own ideas may employ for that 
end the wisdom of the serpent. It is only to be 
asked that his tactics should be fully understood. 

The distinction which Lord Beaconsfield drew 
between popular privileges and democratic rights 
shows the trend of his thoughts on this subject. His 
mind was running on the Toryism of the eighteenth 
century, when peasantry and artisans ahke, farmers, 
country gentlemen, manufacturers, and shopkeepers, 
were, as a rule, Tories, outnumbered in the House 
of Commons by the nominees of Whig boroughs, 
and in the Lords, of course, by " the Revolution fami- 



256 TORY MEMORIES. 

lies/' but jealous of the oligarchy, devoted to the 
Church, and haters of German alliances. Burke him- 
self admitted this much. 

Lord Beaconsfield believed that the English people 
on the whole — all below the higher aristocracy — would, if 
properly led, be on the side of the Church and the Crown. 
At all events, he thought the experiment worth trying. 
But he never meant to establish democracy as the 
form of government in which our foreign and domestic 
policy should be dictated by the masses. He thought the 
people could safely be trusted with political power under 
the guidance of those to whom they had long been accus- 
tomed to look up, and that in voting for one who they 
thought would make the best member of Parliament they 
would not be voting for one who wished to overthrow 
what they themselves desired to preserve. In this calcu- 
lation, however, there were several factors left out, which 
Lord Beaconsfield either did not, or would not, recognise 
In one of his novels he speaks of " agitation " as a newly- 
developed political force of evil omen. Did he not see 
that a weapon which had once been so successful was not 
likely to be readily laid aside. Suppose even four- 
fifths of the British people to be satisfied with the 
existing constitution and desirous of no further changes, 
would the residuum, the remaining one-fifth, let them 
alone ? We all know what small minorities can do 
when directed by persevering energy, and corresponding 
ability ; and these qualities are never likely to be 
wanting in any small body of men who stand aloof from 
the majority, as they set original ideals before them- 
selves, and by the very fact of their differing from their 
fellows attest their own powers of independent thought. 
But it is waste of words to dwell on so trite a fact as that 



TORY DEMOCRACY. 257 

the greatest events are often the work of a few zealots^ 
and proceed from very small beginnings. 

If you question a labouring man about politics, it 
is quite possible that he may hold his tongue, but his 
silence will be some clue to his thoughts. If he did 
not agree with his interrogator, he might not well know 
how to express his dissent in a civil manner. But 
I don't think he would say what he didn't believe 
as a way of getting over the difficulty. Such, at least, 
is my own experience. I have always found, as far 
as my own memory extends, that the Radicalism, if 
we are to caU it so, of the working man sprang from 
no hostility to the Church or the gentry, but simply 
from the desire of bettering his own condition. If this 
could be done without injury to the gentry or the Church 
he would be perfectly content. 

Between the peasantry and the gentry there is no 
purely class jealousy such as is so potent an element in 
Radicalism generally. I have talked a good deal with 
labourers at different times, and I have never heard them 
speak disrespectfully of clergymen or landlords as a class. 
Individuals among them there might be, of course, 
who were unpopular. But my conviction is that the 
natural sympathies of the peasantry, if allowed free play, 
would be in favour of those under whom they and their 
fathers have lived for so many generations. Such are 
my memories of what the English peasantry were when 
I lived more among them than I have done of late. 
Since that time, no doubt, there has been some change. 
Ill tongues have come between them and their ancient 
friends, and whether the effect of this can be effaced 
or not is the question of the future. 

The artisan class, who know very little of the rural 

R 



258 TORY MEMORIES. 

gentry, except what they read in Radical newspapers, 
have at times shown very strong Tory prochvities. The 
clergy in the towns have great influence with them, and 
I don't think the Church of England would be in any 
danger if the artisans' sympathies were not interfered 
with by appeals to his material interests. The political 
Dissenters know this, and they form a kind of mutual 
insurance society with the Trades Unions, so that the 
working man can't vote for the one without voting for 
the other. If by Tory democracy is meant a " con- 
federation " of the minor aristocracy, the mercantile 
and professional classes, the artisans and the peasantry, 
in favour of " ancient and permanent institutions," 
my own memory does not supply me with material 
for the formation of any strong opinion as to whether 
it is practicable, though the question is not unlikely 
to be put to the test at no distant future. But I 
think if such a combination were possible, it would re- 
quire a different leader from Lord Randolph Churchill, 
whose attitude in Parliament has been attributed 
by his son to very mixed motives. For the leader 
of such a party, one who can rekindle the smoulder- 
ing loyalty of the rural population, and persuade 
the landowners to make such sacrifices as are 
necessary to render it permanent, must be a man 
of transparent sincerity as well as of enthusiastic 
energy. The difficulties he would have to cope with 
seem to me at this moment almost insurmountable. But 
the mind of the people does not lie upon the surface. 
Nobody could have foretold the immense majority which 
started up at the call of Mr. Pitt, and overthrew a party 
whose roots were so deeply seated in the soil. Nobody 
foresaw the sweeping flood of public opinion which. 



TORY DEMOCRACY. 259 

once let loose, overthrew the old constitution fifty 

years afterwards. 

Among my Tory memories one is that half a century 
ago the rural population looked up with reverence to 
the Crown ; and it is possible that, if threatened, they 
would rally round it again as they did in 1784. One 
thing, at all events, I recollect very distinctly ; and 
that is that down to very recent times Dissenters were 
regarded by the peasantry in general with a very un- 
favourable eye. I can testify to the survival of this 
feeling only twenty years ago in more English counties 
than one. It is a legacy from the eighteenth century, 
and wherever it still operates is an element to be reckoned 
with in the labourer's political creed. 

Of its existence on a large scale at the date above- 
mentioned I have clear personal recollections, and I 
am quite certain that at that time had the " democracy " 
— if I must call it so — been appealed to on any question 
in which the Church and the Dissenters were at variance 
— I mean if this had been the sole issue before them — 
a large majority would have been found upon the Tory 
side. How it may be now I cannot say. I am con- 
cerned only with what I can remember ; and do I not 
remember many a sturdy villager who was always ready 
with a gibe at " the Methodies," as they were called, 
and many a small freeholder, as independent as any 
man need be, who, if asked before a coming election 
how he should vote, would reply, with a twinkle in his 
eye, " I stan' by the Church " ? As far as such men 
as these represent the democracy at the present day, 
Tory democracy — I use the term under protest — may 
not be altogether a mere dream, though Mr. Balfour 
is leader of the party. 



26o TORY MEMORIES. 

There was a tradition — a most unfounded one, I 
needn't say — that Dissenters were not to be trusted. 
The same prevailed in regard to Roman CathoHcs, who 
by certain classes of the community were, and still 
are, all set down as Jesuits. I remember hearing a 
distinguished London surgeon, member of a. class 
usually pretty free from theological bias, utter rather 
too pointed a joke on this subject. Joke though it 
was, it is evidence of the survival of the old tradi- 
tion.* If our " ancient and permanent institutions " 
are to be saved by Tory democracy, Tory democracy 
will find its most powerful ally in the Church of England. 

* See Cobbett's "Cottage Economy," p. ii8. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

TORY SPORTSMEN. 

The Late Lord Stanley of Alderley — A Mahometan Supporter of the 
Church of England — Coot-shooting at Alderley — -George Baden- 
Powell — Southey's Small Band of Admirers — A Writing Contest 
with Lord Stanley — Trespassers — Lord Stanley's Eccentricities — 
Solitary Shoots ■ — • Wind and Rain — A Shooting Bishop — The 
Editor of the Edinburgh Review — The Dowager Lady Stanley 
— Her Treatment of a Fellow-Passenger — More about Shooting — 
A Murderous Ass — Three Welsh Parsons — At a Welsh Manor 
House — A Welsh Dissenter and his Little Superstitions — Colonel 
Talbot — A Reminiscence of the Fourteenth Earl of Derby — Lord 
Stanley of Alderley's Mastiffs — A Tenants' Ball — Morris Dancing — 
Making Converts — A Compliment from Lord Strathnairn. 

There can be no doubt in any well-regulated mind that 
one of the notes of Toryism is a love of field-sports. 
At one time of day it was a reproach to the Tory party 
that they consisted so largely of fox-hunters. Most 
country gentlemen were Tories, and most country gen- 
tlemen were sportsmen. There was just that element of 
truth in the charge brought against this respectable body 
of politicians. We are now about to visit scenes where 
the spirit of Toryism prevailed, if not the letter, and 
where the pursuit of game and the support of the Church 
of England, where such support was very much needed, 
went hand in hand — I am speaking of Wales, and the 
estates of Lord Stanley of Alderley in Anglesey. That 
branch of the Stanley family were Whigs, and I suppose 
that is what the late lord would have caUed himself 
261 



262 TORY MEMORIES. 

had he called himself anything ; but in practice he was 
as good a Tory as one could wish to see. He himself, as 
is well known, was a Mahometan, which he said was a 
reUgion " you could live up to." But inquiring at Con- 
stantinople, on succeeding to the family property, what 
was his duty to the Church of England, he was in- 
structed always to support the established religion of 
the country in which he found himself, and this Lord 
Stanley did to the utmost of his ability. In building 
churches and schools, and helping the poorer clergy in a 
substantial manner, there were few of his order who sur- 
passed or even equalled him. Whether at Penrhos, 
his seat near Holyhead, or at Alderley in Cheshire, he 
was a regular attendant at the parish church. He 
regarded the Church of England as a great and beneficent 
institution ; but this did not prevent him from sym- 
pathising largely with his co-religionists in other parts 
of the world ; and if there was a flaw anywhere in his 
Tory faith, it was in his views regarding India and the 
rights of the native population. But he seldom talked 
on such subjects, and you might have stayed with him 
for a month without ever finding out what he thought 
about them. 

I made his acquaintance through the press. I had 
written an article in the St. James's Gazette about wild 
pheasants, and Lord Stanley inquired of Greenwood 
the name of the author. On learning who it was, he at 
once sent me an invitation to come down and stay with 
him at Alderley, which, of course, I gladly accepted. 
This was in November, and I had one day's shooting 
with him in the woods. His big shoot for the season 
was over, and the pheasants were rather scarce ; but 
there were enough to put my skill to the test, and he was 



TORY SPORTSMEN. 263 

so far satisfied that he begged me to stay another day 
and help to shoot the coots on the lake. The manner of 
doing it was this. The birds lie in the reeds and rushes 
tinder the banks, and the shooters go out into the middle 
of the lake in a boat. The coots, when disturbed, 
fly across the water, often coming well overhead and 
affording good sporting shots, their flight being not 
unlike that of a black-cock's. I think we killed twenty- 
three, it being necessary at times to thin them down, 
as they drove away the wild fowl. 

From this time forward I continued to see a good 
deal of Lord Stanley. In the following year I went to 
Alderley in September for partridge shooting, and 
afterwards on to Penrhos, where he had a party. 
Here, as I have said in an earlier chapter, I first met 
George Baden-Powell, and the day after I arrived 
he and another man and myself shot twenty - five 
brace of partridges. Baden-Powell was a very cheery 
man in a country house, with abundance of jokes 
always ready. Washington Irving says that the 
happiest parties are those in which the jokes are 
small and the laughter abundant. At Penrhos we 
often realised the truth of this remark. 

Lord Stanley himself was very deaf, and at dinner- 
time he liked to have ladies whom he knew well sitting 
one on each side of him, to tell him what was being 
talked about. There were only a few people staying in 
the house on the occasion of my first visit ; but I 
think one among them was Mrs. Charles Stanley, the 
sister-in-law of Dean Stanley, and a widow. I had a 
good deal of literary conversation with her, for she 
was fond of books and well read in the English 
poets. I happened to say that I admired Southey's 



264 TORY MEMORIES. 

poems, upon which she rephed that she supposed she 
and I and the Dean were the only three people left 
who owned to an affection for Southey; she herself 
was very fond of him, and the Dean especially 
admired " The Curse of Kehama," which is my own 
favourite, too. 

While she was there I was the only married man 
among the shooters, and my wife therefore the only 
sportsman's wife. There was considerable chaff about 
what a sportsman's wife ought to be, and it was pro- 
posed that Lord Stanley and I should each write an 
article on the subject and send it up to Greenwood for 
the St. James's, he to insert the one he liked best. They 
were both copied out by someone else so that he might 
not recognise the handwriting, and unfortunately he 
chose mine — at which Lord Stanley was for the moment, 
I think, really annoyed. But to Greenwood it was the 
amateur against the professional, a contest which usually 
has the same ending. I remember Mrs. Charles Stanley 
took a good deal of interest in it, and always addressed 
my wife in future as " the sportsman's wife." Lord. 
Stanley, who was an " improving " landlord, and laid 
out a good deal of money on farm-houses and 
cottages, had a fancy for getting ladies of his acquaint- 
ance to give him their photographs, to be enlarged and 
painted on panel tiles in one of his farmhouse dairies. 
My wife figures in one of these in a farmhouse not far 
from the South Stack. 

It was near this spot, too, that I witnessed an 
amusing incident. We were out shooting, and the 
keeper caught two trespassers, who were getting nuts 
or blackberries, or mushrooms, and brought them 
before his lordship, who immediately began to 



TORY SPORTSMEN. 265 

examine them. His deafness^ however, prevented him 
from hearing their answers very distinctly. " What, 
what did he say ? " turning to the keeper. " Did he 
say he never had a mother ? " " Ah, my lord," growled 
the man ; " and he wouldn't ha' told you if he had had." 
The keeper evidently thought that the boy's natural 
taste for perjury, like Mr. Winkle's, would induce him 
to deny that he came into the world like other people, 
the imputation at the same time being coupled with the 
curious admission that, after all, it might have been so. 
The boys, of course, were allowed to go free with an 
admonition. But Lord Stanley was accused of treating 
other trespassers less mercifully. An old lady picking 
blackberries not very far from where some partridges 
had settled, when the birds got up, received a shot in 
the edge of her ear which sent her off squealing up the 
village street, screaming that the " old lord " had shot 
her, and to the last she fully beUeved that he had done 
it on purpose. It would only be of a piece with other 
acts of Tory tyranny, which doubtless she had often 
heard denounced by local patriots. 

Sometimes we had very pleasant house parties at 
Penrhos, both in September and December. Lord 
Stanley's own little eccentricities all helped to enliven 
us. Nobody was to come down to breakfast on Sunday 
morning in a shooting jacket ; nobody was to shirk 
coming home from shooting in time for five o'clock tea. 
Nobody was to make himself specially agreeable to any 
given lady, young or old, married or single, on pain of 
being charged with flirting, a crime of which Lord 
Stanley seemed to entertain a holy horror. I myself, 
for only walking up and down the terrace in front of 
the house for ten minutes before dinner, in company 



266 TORY MEMORIES. 

with a middle-aged lady, was solemnly warned that I 
was suspected of this grave offence, and adjured to be 
more careful in future. Why, with these ideas in his 
head, he filled his house with girls and men and women 
who, when the shooting was over, had nothing else to 
do but that, I couldn't understand. There was no 
billiard-room. Cards Lord Stanley detested ; charades 
I'm sure he would have abhorred as fit only for such 
damsels as, to use his own words, " did not pretend to 
be good." This was an affectation he could not tolerate. 
Speaking of a pretty actress whom we knew, I asked if 
he would like to be introduced to her. " She does not 
pretend to be good, I hope, does she ? " Such a hypo- 
crite as that he would not have cared to be acquainted 
with. I fancy he looked at flirting through much the 
same spectacles. He had, moreover, considerable conver- 
sational powers when he chose to exert them. He had 
been attache at Constantinople with Lord Strangford ; 
and he told us, among other good things, that Lord 
Strangford wore his beard so long that when he wrote it 
trailed in the ink and described patterns on the paper. 

I have said that he rarely talked politics, and he 
seldom did; but he read the political articles in the 
St. James's Gazette and the Nineteenth Century with 
avidity, and once when he quartered myself and his 
nephew Arthur Stanley, then some twenty years of age, 
at one of his farmhouses, he said, half in joke and half 
in earnest, that he had committed him to me because of 
my principles, and in the hope that they might prove 
infectious. As my principles were strictly Tory, we 
want no further evidence about Lord Stanley's, or any 
further justification for classing Penrhos and Alder ley 
among my Tory memories. His lordship's hopes in 



TORY SPORTSMEN. 267 

this particular instance were doomed to disappointment, 
for his nephew parted from me quite uncontaminated 
with the Tory views which I was intended to instil into 
him. He is now member for the Eddisbury division 
of Cheshire, and heir to the barony of Alderley. 

Lady Stanley did not often come to Penrhos ; but 
she sometimes did, though not in very good health. 
One event I remember in connection with her — namely, 
that poor Mr. Garnett (Secretary to the Board of Inland 
Revenue), the most amiable and obliging of mankind, 
volunteered to drive her out in the pony chaise, which 
by some mischance he upset — an accident which her 
ladyship persisted was no accident at all, but done on 
purpose. 

Of course, I never passed a fortnight in Anglesey 
without plenty of rain ; but the weather found me bad 
to beat in those days, when the birds were plentiful. 
Three times going out with one other man was I left 
alone in the rain to finish the day with the keeper. 
One deserter, I remember, was Lord Granard, who 
thought, I believe, that the birds were not plentiful 
enough to make the game worth the candle, and he left 
me between twelve and one to do the best I could in a 
cold, drizzling rain. However, I persevered and made 
a fair bag off my own gun considering the weather — 
eight brace and some rabbits — after Lord Granard left. 
Another day, when I was left alone almost as soon as we 
started, I returned wet through with eleven brace. And 
another I shall never forget when I got home with the 
water streaming down my back under my clothes, with 
nine brace. This day I had to fight not only the rain, 
but the wind, which in Anglesey is no joke. I received 
the congratulations of the sporting part of the com- 



268 TORY MEMORIES. 

munity on each occasion ; but I think Lord Stanley's 
thoughts took a different direction. He said I was 
kilhng his keepers. He approved, however, of my con- 
servative taste in preferring dogs to driving, and also 
of my Uking for spaniels, of which he was very fond him- 
self. I recall these sporting delights because I owe them 
to my political principles, and they are essentially Tory 
memories. Toryism has brought me large returns in the 
way of sport, if not in silver and gold ! 

Talking of shooting in the rain, I have another 
reminiscence of the pursuit of sport under the same 
difficulties, and of being left to enjoy it alone, which I 
may as well introduce here. This was at Coghurst, near 
Hastings, where I was shooting with Mr. Ashburnham. 
It was late in the season, and we tried for a few 
pheasants, but they wouldn't rise, and then we tried 
ferretting for rabbits, but they wouldn't bolt. It 
was now raining fast, and Mr. Ashburnham said to 
me that I could go on if I liked but that he should 
go home, which he did. I stayed on, and we — that 
is, myself and a couple of men — returned through 
the wood by the way we came, and ferreted all the 
holes once again, and, curiously enough, this time the 
rabbits bolted freely. I shot thirteen, and emerged 
from the wood rather triumphant. 

But to return to Penrhos. Amongst the guests I 
remember the Bishop of Bangor, Dr. Lloyd, who was not 
only a prelate, a Tory, and a scholar, but a sportsman 
also, and he came out shooting with us in a happy 
mixture of venatic and episcopal costume which was 
very interesting. He was not at all a bad shot, and I 
thought it a privilege to walk by his side. Dr. Johnson, 
I suppose, would have been shocked at such a spectacle ; 



TORY SPORTSMEN. 269 

but though a straight Tory I am not a strait-laced one ; 
and I don't see why Church dignitaries at the present 
day should not follow pointers and setters as their pre- 
decessors followed hawk and hound. And the Bishop 
of Bangor, as I say, was a scholar, and could, no doubt, 
have construed at sight either Xenophon's or Oppian's 
Cynegetica, if he had been " put on." It may be 
doubted whether the Prior of Jervaulx or Archbishop 
Abbot could have done either. I had not shot very 
weU that day, and missed two or three rabbits under 
the Bishop's nose ; but I regained my lost ground 
and my own self-respect in the evening by supplying 
him with a quotation from Lucan which he had for- 
gotten. Lord Stanley was fond of classical quotations, 
but he did not know that one, and I think was rather 
aggrieved at my ostentation in quoting so little known a 
poet. He had theories of his own about disputed pas- 
sages in Virgil such as " Quisque suos patimur manes " 
and Dido's promise, " Quam mihiquum dederis cumulatam 
morte remittam." The fourth .3Eneid had evidently 
made a great impression on him, and he referred to it 
in the House of Lords more than once. 

Once while I was at Penrhos Mr. Reeve, the editor 
of the Edinburgh Review, and Mrs. Reeve came to stay 
for a few days. He knew an old friend of mine, then 
Consul at Palermo, who had for many years been a 
constant contributor to the Edinburgh — William Stigant. 
He said he was a very useful man, knew two or three 
literatures, and could write well, but he was always dis- 
contented. " He has got," said Mr. Reeve, " almost 
the best consulate which the Government have to give 
away, the pages of the Edinburgh are always open to 
him, and yet he is for ever grumbling." I who knew the 



270 TORY MEMORIES. 

man knew this to be true ; but then Stigant was an 
out-and-out Liberal, and I remember very well when 
the third volume of Macaulay's History came out and 
we read on the concluding page that it might come 
to be a question whether it would not be necessary 
" to sacrifice liberty in order to save civilisation/' 
Stigant was gloriously indignant. " What can he 
mean by it, Hannay ? " he exclaimed, with a dark 
frown. " Oh," said Hannay cheerfully, " there can 
be no doubt about what he means." 

I was glad to make the acquaintance of Mr. Reeve, 
and it led afterwards to my becoming a contributor to 
the Edinburgh myself. If it should be asked how I, a 
strict Tory, could write for an equally strict Whig 
review, I can only answer by referring them to the 
meeting between Serjeant Buzfuz, counsel for the 
plaintiff, and Serjeant Snubbin, counsel for the defend- 
ant, in Bardell v. Pickwick, and Mr. Pickwick's horror 
at the cold-blooded manner in which the two rival 
advocates wished each other good morning. 

Mrs. Vaughan, widow of the former Master of the 
Temple, once Headmaster of Harrow, and Vicar of 
Doncaster, came to stay at Penrhos while I was there. 
She was Dean Stanley's sister, I think, and I was pleased 
to meet her, as, of course, she knew the Halfords very 
well, and had often met my elder brothers when she 
was staying with them. She inquired after them, and 
asked many questions about my father, whom she re- 
membered as the oldest clergyman in the diocese and the 
representative of a bygone age. Lord Stanley always 
called her by the name of a popular actress. His 
general ideas about actresses, which were weU known, 
gave the joke what little point it had. 



TORY SPORTSMEN. 271 

I had some interesting political talks once with the 
Dowager Lady Stanley, whose husband, Lord Stanley's 
father, was a well-known Whig, President of the Board 
of Trade and Postmaster-General under Lord Palmer- 
ston. His widow must have heard all that passed in 
the inner Whig circle on public affairs ; and it was 
she who told me what I have already mentioned 
in another chapter — she told me that the Whig party 
feared a collision between the Crown and the Parha- 
ment as long as Prince Albert lived. She was a 
special admirer of John Morley's writings, and was 
altogether a very well-informed and amusing old lady, 
quite of the old school. Once, I was told, but for this 
I cannot vouch, that when she got into the train 
at Holyhead she took a seat in the carriage which had 
previously been taken possession of by some gentleman, 
who had left his coat and hat to keep it for him. Her 
ladyship removed these without the smallest scruple, 
and when the gentleman returned and politely informed 
her that the seat was his, she took no notice. He then 
became rather importunate, when the lady looked out 
of the window and called to the guard, bidding him 
" take away this troublesome person." 

Lord Stanley himself was a total abstainer, and 
though, of course, there were the usual wines at dinner 
and after, it cannot be said that even when the ladies 
had retired, the bottle circulated very freely. I remem- 
ber Lord Granard whispering to me as the decanter 
came into my hand, " I say, give us a back-hander." As 
we did not stay very long in the dining-room, we should 
have had a longish evening to get through but for Lord 
Stanley's rule of giving us all our candles at ten o'clock, 
the gentlemen retiring to smoke and the ladies to discuss 



272 TORY MEMORIES. 

the gentlemen^ with that quick perception of character 
which Lord Beaconsfield calls " the triumph of intui- 
tion." 

Breakfast was nominally at nine, and would be 
over before ten, when Lord Stanley would usually ask 
one of the party, generally myself, to go out and see the 
keepers and tell them what time he would be ready to 
start, which was usually about an hour before we actu- 
ally did set out. But in this matter you had to mind 
your p's and q's. The sporting party were expected 
to wait in the stable-yard with the keepers till Lord 
Stanley came out, which was not till he had done his 
letters ; but it was high treason to quit the spot even 
for a moment, and if any gentleman was missing when our 
host hurried out, even though he rejoined the group in 
a few seconds, he suffered heavily. But the shooting 
was good when you once got out. Turnips, potatoes, 
and barley stubble interspersed among rocks covered 
with fern and heather, made it ideal partridge ground for 
shooting over with dogs ; but Lord Stanley would 
rarely take the trouble to beat it carefully, and as he 
seldom stayed out above four hours, of which a part 
was given to lunch, we never made any heavy bags. 
The best days I remember were with three guns thirty- 
seven brace, and with four guns fifty-one brace ; but 
on these occasions we had longer days. I learned for 
the first time while shooting in Anglesey how fond 
partridges are of seaweed. They would often lie among 
the stones on the beach, and in any field manured with 
seaweed you were sure to find them. 

The cover shooting in the winter was better managed. 
The head keeper had the direction of that, and we 
used to go on until it grew dusk. I forget what the bags 



TORY SPORTSMEN. 273 

used to average, but we always had plenty of shooting. 
It was a good place for woodcocks, and there was abund- 
ance of rabbits. There were some good snipe bogs on 
the estate, but I never happened to be there in favour- 
able weather, the bogs being generally too full of water. 
But rabbit shooting was what Lord Stanley loved best, 
and I have seldom seen a better rabbit shot. He was 
very keen over this sport, and you had to look out for 
yourself when you were anywhere within range of his 
gun. In shooting at a hare which was almost between 
my legs, he narrowly, of course, missed peppering me 
pretty sharply. He saw that, but he only smiled and 
said : " You'd have been a great loss to the party." 

Our partridge days used to wind up sometimes with 
tea at " Ellen's Tower," a tower on the edge of the cliff 
near the South Stack lighthouse, on which it looked 
down. The ladies were driven up from Penrhos to 
meet us there, and sometimes on these occasions we 
visited the lighthouse. 

The rock on which the hghthouse stands has some 
psychological interest — for such, at least, as believe that 
animals have souls. The lighthouse man used to employ 
a donkey for the necessary work of the place, and the 
donkey was lord of the greensward which encircled the 
edifice. Thinking that he was too hardly worked, his 
master bought a pony to help him ; but Johnny would 
have no such intruder on the ground which he had so 
long called his own, and he deliberately murdered the 
pony, if not with " pleasing circumstances of good 
taste," like Toad-in-the-Hole's tom cat, at least with 
a kind of devilish ingenuity of which his owner declared 
himself a witness. He enticed the pony by degrees close 
up to the edge of the rock, and then suddenly turned 



274 TORY MEMORIES. 

round and kicked him over. The fame of this animal 
has, I beheve, spread beyond Anglesey, and it is a pity 
that he did not Uve while De Quincey was alive, so 
that he might have been immortalised in " Murder 
Considered as One of the Fine Arts." 

It is superfluous to say that Welsh clergymen are 
almost of necessity Tories ; and the three whom I met 
in Anglesey happened also to be three of the best shots 
I ever met. Mr. Kyfiin of Llan Badrig was one, 
Mr. Morgan of Bodewryd was another, and Mr. Jones of 
Grafton in Cheshire, though I made his acquaintance 
at Penrhos, was a third. The three were fine specimens 
of the Church Militant, and I thought, if the fate of the 
Church in Wales was likely to be decided by blows, here 
were three champions worthy of her. Jones was under- 
stood to be mighty powerful with the gloves, and when 
the head keeper ventured to say he should like to have 
a friendly round with him, and thought he could " give 
him something to do," one of the party, Ukewise a handy 
man with his fives, said he'd better not try, for that Jones 
would kill him. I was amused some time after this 
by the keeper taking me aside confidentially, and ask- 
ing me, in reference to Jones, who was walking with 
us that day, " Does that gentleman practise, sir ? " 
using the word " practise " as he would have done about 
a lawyer or doctor. I was able to assure him not only 
that Jones " practised," but that his services were 
highly valued, and that his sporting and pugilistic merits 
were as nothing compared to his prowess in the pulpit. 

About ten miles inland from Penrhos Lord Stanley 
had another estate of about 1,500 acres. Here there 
was no house, and he used to stay with one of his tenants 
and distribute any friends whom he might ask to shoot 



TORY SPORTSMEN. 275 

with him among the others. I used to have a very 
pleasant time here. I was always in the same farm- 
house, sometimes with two ladies, at other times with 
some male companions. It was an old Manor-house 
— Plas Bodewryd, or, as we should say, Bodewryd Hall 
— and was a very picturesque old place. The partridge 
shooting all round was excellent, though there were no 
rocks or fern or heather to speak of. But by living in 
a farmhouse, and shooting a good deal by myself, and 
talking, as far as it was possible, with the farmers and 
labourers, I got some knowledge of the nature of Welsh 
Dissent. But of that presently. 

The ladies whom Lord Stanley used to invite to 
this pleasant retreat were often the daughters or sisters 
of officers or others whom he had known in his early days. 
I remember Miss Meadows Taylor very well. She was 
the daughter of Colonel Meadows Taylor, of the Indian 
Army, whose regiment was one of the very few which 
did not join the mutineers. He married an Indian 
princess, and his daughter's pedigree was lost in the 
mists of antiquity. Another very accomplished lady, 
a Frenchwoman, Mile. Belloc, was frequently one of 
the party ; she was a very clever artist, and both 
were there when Mrs. Kebbel came to Bodewryd. I also 
in her absence had the pleasure of entertaining Miss 
Kenealy, the well-known lady doctor and novelist, the 
daughter of Dr. Kenealy, of Tichborne celebrity. She 
adjured me never to work more than three hours a day. 
It was as much, she declared, as anyone's brain could 
stand without injury. The last two ladies with whom 
I shared the lodgings at Bodewryd about three years 
ago were Miss Hepworth Dixon, the authoress, daughter 
of Mr. Hepworth Dixon, the well-known editor of the 



276 TORY MEMORIES. 

Athenceum, and a young lady not out of her teens, 
I think, the daughter of a neighbouring clergyman. 
Lord Stanley lost no opportunity of a joke, sometimes 
sailing rather near the wind, and when he asked Miss 
Dixon how I had entertained them, she gave me an 
excellent character, adding, " And he told us some very 
good stories." " I hope," said Lord Stanley, " they 
were proper ones." " Oh ! " said Miss Dixon, " think 
of blushing eighteen ! " 

The rabbit shoot at Bodewryd was Lord Stanley's 
great day, and from all the farmhouses came his lady 
guests to witness the sport. This took place among some 
high banks, or steep hillocks thickly covered with gorse ; 
and as each was beaten in turn, the guns were planted 
round, while Lord Stanley took his stand upon the top, 
with the lady whom he had chosen for his companion 
that day by his side. There he stood up clear against 
the sky like a figure on a monument, and as there was 
abundance of rabbits, the firing for some time would be 
pretty hot. The rabbits, when they did not choose to 
face the guns — that is, to bolt across the grass from one 
bank to another, ran up-hill and made for the other 
side. As long as they were crossing the level bit of 
ground at the top you were safe enough ; but an ascend- 
ing or descending rabbit placed the guns below in some 
jeopardy. I never saw an accident happen — not, at 
least, in rabbit shooting, though it is the most liable to 
accidents of any kind of sport. Lord Stanley did not like 
the rabbits missed, and he liked still less to see an in- 
attentive gun let a rabbit go by within shot without 
firing at it. Then the warder on the hill let you know 
what he thought of you, his trumpet giving forth no 
uncertain sound. 



TORY SPORTSMEN. 277 

I am very fond of rabbit shooting, and used to enjoy 
these days very much ; but the partridge shooting, as 
I have said, was very good, too — very good for ground 
where there was no gamekeeper and the game was left 
entirely to the care of the tenants. I could go out any 
day by myself with a boy and a spaniel, and make sure 
in any ordinary season of eight or ten brace, some- 
times getting eleven or twelve, if birds, gun, and dog 
behaved properly. 

The tenants themselves on this part of the estate 
were all very pleasant men, and many of them 
well educated and well read. The tenant of Bodewryd 
farm, who died after my fourth or fifth season there, 
was a particularly intelligent and gentlemanly man. 
He used always to dine with us, and took the bottom of 
the table. He had a great sense of humour, with a 
" slow, wise smile," like that of Tennyson's miller. 
I talked with him sometimes about the Church in Wales ; 
and though in speaking to a Churchman and a friend 
of his landlord like myself, he was naturally rather 
reserved, I think I perceived that it was rather the un- 
equal distribution of Church property than any question 
of Church government, or even doctrines, which op- 
pressed his conscience. The condition of the poorer 
clergy in Wales — that is, the majority of the parochial 
clergy — no doubt gave point to this argument. He 
had sense enough to see, however, that Disestablish- 
ment, if it tended to equality, could certainly not banish 
poverty. And I should think that with him, as with 
many other Welsh Dissenters, it was rather because 
Methodism had become an hereditary creed with them, 
which they were bound in honour to stand by, than for 
any other reason, that they remained Nonconformists. 



278 TORY MEMORIES. 

Our host was, as I have said, a very sensible and 
well-informed man, but some old rural superstitions 
still lingered in the back of his head, and I was very 
much amused one day when, speaking of an old woman 
who was reputed by the whole neighbourhood to be a 
witch, he assured me gravely that she was " quite 
harmless," implying that her equivocal character made 
some such assurance necessary. I remember, too, that 
a hare used to lie in a neighbouring churchyard, and 
had been shot at once or twice and missed. My friend 
would not have hked to shoot that hare himself. He 
had read the " Ancient Mariner," and perhaps thought 
of the albatross. He was not so far gone as to have 
supposed that the witch, after the manner of her kind, 
sometimes took the form of a hare. However, I de- 
stroyed the mystery, if there was one, by shooting the 
hare myself. 

The farmers' wives, daughters, and sisters whom I 
met in this part of Anglesey were often very agreeable 
and ladylike women, and I could not help saying to 
myself very often, both of themselves and their hus- 
bands, fathers and brothers, Why are they not Tories like 
their ancestors, who at one time of day were the staunch- 
est Cavaliers and Churchmen going ? The Church let 
them go, and, ceasing to be Churchmen, they ceased to 
be Tories. Alas ! alas ! considering the condition of 
Wales at the present moment, an old Tory may be for- 
given for saying with Wordsworth, that " the wiser mind 
Mourns less for what time takes away Than what it 
leaves behind." 

There were more pheasants, I think, at Penrhos 
than at Alderley, for the game had been more strictly 
preserved there by Lord Stanley's uncle, Mr. Owen 



TORY SPORTSMEN. 279 

Stanley, and the covers, it may be, were better situated 
for shooting. The whole country, too, was much 
wilder and more picturesque. But the tenantry and 
labourers were not, perhaps, so well affected as they 
were at Bodewryd. On the Penrhos estate there were 
many very small tenants, who had learned bad ways from 
the Irish population at Holyhead. They would always 
insist on keeping dogs, whether they had any sheep or 
cattle to look after or not. This was a special griev- 
ance with Lord Stanley, who, in his onslaught on the 
dogs, occasionally reminded me of Miss Trotwood and 
the donkey boys. They certainly were a great nuisance 
— as the owners made no attempt to keep them in, and 
they were allowed to ramble all over the fields in the 
shooting season. I have sometimes been wicked enough 
to imagine that this was done on purpose, when they 
knew Lord Stanley was coming. 

At Alderley I met two very keen sportsmen. One was 
Colonel Talbot, son-in-law of the fourteenth Earl of Derby, 
who was leader of the Tory party from 1846 to 1870. 
Colonel Talbot was a capital shot, and a very frank 
talker, and he enlivened the interval between the second 
beats, or, when sport grew slack, by a variety of choice 
anecdotes, sometimes turning round to me after he had 
told one and saying, " You know, Mr. Kebbel, this is 
not to go into the Pall Mall Gazette." There was very 
little fear of that in the majority of instances ! One or 
two others, which did not go into the Pall Mall Gazette, 
went into my Uttle biography of Lord Derby ; and one 
of them I think so interesting that it will bear being 
repeated among these " Memories." Some of the Earl's 
covers adjoined the coal-pits, and with the coUiers 
he was on excellent terms. They never touched his 



28o TORY MEMORIES. 

game, but always turned out in large numbers to see 
the covers shot, enjoying the sport keenly, and betting 
eagerly on the guns. The pitmen, indeed, almost wor- 
shipped him, and knew that they were sure of his indul- 
gence or forbearance on any just cause. On one occa- 
sion when his party was approaching the pits, a deputa- 
tion waited on him to beg him not to allow a particular 
hare to be shot. She had made her form on one of the 
" spoil banks " as the mounds are called on which the 
refuse is deposited, and the men had tamed her so that 
she would eat out of their hands. It is needless to say 
that their prayer was granted, and an edict issued placing 
puss under protection for the remainder of her natural 
existence. On these occasions he was always attended 
by some of his tenantry, with whom he laughed and 
joked at his ease. He relied, like Charles II., on his 
ready wit to extricate himself from any difficulties into 
which his love of fun might lead him ; and it certainly 
never fell in vain on the ears of the Lancashire farmers, 
nor, if all reports are true, on the ears of Sir Robert Peel 
either. 

I feel indebted to Colonel Talbot for putting me at 
my ease with regard to a certain habit of mine which 
had incurred both the reproaches and the ridicule of 
my friends and acquaintances : I refer to my love of 
taking plenty of luggage with me whenever I travel. 
Colonel Talbot was alone at Penrhos, but when he left I 
observed that he had bags and portmanteaus with him. 
sufficient, as many would think, for a large family. 1. 
ventured to make some remark about it, when he re- 
plied, with admirable good sense : " Why shouldn't I 
make myself comfortable ? " Why, indeed ? Since that 
time I have never been afraid to meet my enemies in 



TORY SPORTSMEN. 281 

the gate to whatever country house I might be going, 
or whatever luggage I might carry. 

Another well-known shot who came to Alderley 
for the cover shooting was Mr. Bucknill, of the Field. 
He was a very clean shot, and I have seen him knock 
over ten or a dozen pheasants one after the other, all 
dead before they touched the ground. 

A fine breed of mastiffs had long been kept up at 
Alderley, the genuine old English mastiff, and very 
savage. There were two left when I first went there. 
One of them Lord Stanley was in the habit of taking out 
walking with him, and if he met anyone whom he knew, 
and stopped to speak to him, the faithful creature 
would scan the stranger narrowly, and if he raised his 
voice, as, of course, he naturally would do on account 
of Lord Stanley's deafness, " Tiger " would utter a 
deep growl, as much as to let the speaker know that if 
there was going to be a row he had better look out for 
himself. The fun was that as Lord Stanley could not 
hear the dog growl, he could not understand his friend's 
embarrassment . 

But the great event in the winter at Alderley was 
the Tenants' Ball, to which all the tenants, large or 
small, were invited, with their wives and daughters. The 
whole house party — it was never a very large one — 
adjourned to the great hall immediately after dinner, 
when the ball was opened. The first time I was there 
Lady Stanley was present, and danced the first dance, 
I think, with the steward. Spencely, the head keeper, 
was also held in high honour, and there were several 
good-looking young men among the younger farmers, 
and two or three pretty girls among their sisters. But 
all ahke, whether pretty or not, were nicely dressed, 



282 TORY MEMORIES. 

and had nice manners. They bore no traces of their 
rustic occupations. Their complexions had not been in- 
jured, either by wind, frost, or sun, and there were more 
pale faces than rosy ones among them. Several of the 
girls who danced till three or four o'clock in the morning 
had to walk home through the snow to be in time for 
milking at seven. The great feature of this evening was 
the morris dance, something like an ordinary country 
dance, with this difference : that a handkerchief was 
held across under which each couple had to duck, 
chanting meanwhile the following beautiful fragment of 
some ancient legendary ditty, as old, perhaps, as the 

Heptarchy : 

This is it, and that is it. 
This is morris dancing ; 
My poor father broke his leg 
All o' morris dancing. 

I don't beheve that this kind of morris dance had any- 
thing to do with the Moors. This, however, is a ques- 
tion which must be referred to Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck. 
As the handkerchiefs were of different colours, the effect 
was very pretty. Some young ladies from the neigh- 
bourhood were of the party, but both gentlemen and 
ladies were bound to mix freely with all the rest of the 
company ; and as some of the male performers danced 
with less grace than vigour, you might see the Squire's 
daughter swung fairly off her legs in the arms of a stal- 
wart yeoman, who preserved a face of imperturbable 
gravity the while as of one engaged in a solemn duty 
with which there was to be no trifling. 

These visits became annual ones for nearly twenty 
years, and the period which they embrace, 1884-1903, 
I shall always regard as one of the happiest of my life. 



TORY SPORTSMEN. 283 

But Fdid not take my leave of Wales and Cheshire with- 
out a secret twinge of conscience, in that I had not ful- 
filled the duty tacitly assigned to me : I had not 
attempted to make one proselyte. I think Mr. Arthur 
Stanley, who will laugh if he ever sees this, will acknow- 
ledge that I neglected this duty most severely. 

I have had success, though, in that line elsewhere. 
I have every year, for some forty years, been to stay 
with a college friend in Suffolk, who had some nice 
shooting, but was a Whig after the manner of his fore- 
fathers. For a long time I studiously abstained from 
pohtics as such. I talked a good deal about old manners 
and customs, with which I knew he had a secret sym- 
pathy. I got him to see how much better the birds 
used to behave in former days before Free Trade had 
compelled farmers to farm economically, and to mow 
their stubbles, a direct consequence, I assured him, of 
Liberal legislation. I dwelt on the many virtues of the 
good old rector, who belonged to the old school ; and also 
on the inestimable value of a good acquaintance with 
Horace and Homer, and on the charm of the old Univer- 
sity hfe, sneered at by Liberal reformers. By constantly 
expatiating on these various memories and sympathies, 
which all tended in one direction, without ever men- 
tioning such words as Whig or Tory, Liberal or Conser- 
vative, or even discussing any of the political questions 
of the period, I saw with satisfaction that I was making 
an impression on him, and that he was beginning to 
colour like a meerschaum pipe. He has continued to 
grow in grace, and is now on all municipal questions a 
thorough-going Tory. I don't think he has yet voted 
Tory at a Parliamentary election, but I expect he will 
do at the next ! When I have done thus much for a 



284 TORY MEMORIES. 

man, have I not more than repaid him for all the part- 
ridges and pheasants I have shot over his ground ? This 
is an action on which a man can look back with comfort 
on his death-bed. I have brought one sheep into the fold, 
and that is more, perhaps, than every Tory can say ! 
I have said a good deal about shooting in these 
reminiscences, and the Game Laws and Toryism are, 
without doubt, very closely connected together. A 
good deal of absurd prejudice on the subject has been 
eradicated from the public mind during the last half- 
century, and the diminution of poaching since the 
passing of the Ground Game Act in 1881 has done away 
with another set of arguments less sentimental, but 
equally illogical. The starving peasant snaring a rabbit 
for his sick wife has disappeared from the note-book 
of the pseudo-philanthropist. As game no longer pre- 
sents the same temptation to the criminal classes that 
it did when hares and rabbits were more abundant, the 
public are no longer shocked by so many fatal affrays 
between keepers and poachers as used to occur in a 
former generation. There remains, then, only the 
political argument that, as shooting is one of the prin- 
cipal amusements and most invigorating exercises of 
the country gentlemen, and helps largely to keep them 
resident on their estates, game should be abolished on 
this ground alone. " We don't want the country gen- 
tleman," say the Radicals. " We should do better with- 
out him, and instead of encouraging him to remain 
where he is, we should do ever5rthing to rob his position 
of all its pleasures and privileges, of all its influence and 
authority, and so gradually starve him out. We have 
done something towards accomplishing this result, and 
mean to do more. The game must go." 



TORY SPORTSMEN. 285 

So they talk, and so they have talked before ; but 
they have never before been strong enough to make it 
more than talk, and I doubt if they are now. I have 
had a good deal of conversation, both with labourers and 
with farmers, on the subject. Among the latter, no 
doubt, is to be found some discontent, though not very 
deep or very wide, with the existing system, but not 
with the game laws. With the former there is a feel- 
ing that it is rather hard for a man to go to prison for 
taking a rabbit ; but they certainly do not desire that 
there should be no rabbits to take. They think a little 
poaching, though confessedly wrong, should be winked 
at on occasions, Uke drunkenness ; but as for abolish- 
ing the game laws, exterminating game, and suppress- 
ing the sport of shooting, they know a trick worth two 
of that. The farmer's grievance, where he has any, 
is not that game is protected, but that he has not the 
right to it himself. I was talking not long ago to a 
highly respectable young farmer in Hampshire. " I 
think the tenant ought to have the game," he said. 
" Well," I said ; " but the tenant and the landlord 
can't both have it. Which has the prior right ? " But 
he declined to argue the question, nor did it matter. 
I only had from him what I have had from other tenant 
farmers, the acknowledgment that what they want is 
not the repeal of the game laws, but the transference 
of the game to themselves. We should hear nothing 
about the damage done to crops then. 

On the top of this very natural desire to seize what 
does not belong to you, because you happen to hke it, 
comes another grievance of a much more petty charac- 
ter. I have known farmers who couldn't bear to see 
the landlord or his keeper walking across their land. 



286 TORY MEMORIES. 

This was purely personal jealousy. I recollect very 
well as I was walking through a country village with the 
squire of the parish on the way to some partridge shoot- 
ing, a tenant rushing out of his house to beg his land- 
lord not to walk through his beans. Nine times out of 
ten walking through beans does them no harm if you 
don't let the dogs run about in them. Still, I have no 
doubt that in this instance the landlord would have 
received the request courteously had it been made cour- 
teously, and have promised to be as careful as he could 
be. But the man's manner was most offensive. The 
fact was, he did not like the squire on his land at all, 
and he took this way of showing it. My friend, who 
knew his man, answered him very shortly, and went 
on his way, taking the beans as they came without 
doing either more or less harm to them in consequence 
of what had passed. But I mention this little incident 
as illustrative of the temper which prevails among a 
certain class of tenant farmers^— a very limited class, I 
am sure, more noisy than numerous, and actuated rather 
by social jealousy than by agricultural conditions. 

But as for the peasantry, many of them look on fox- 
hunters and pheasant shooters as their best friends. 
Neither the one nor the other can do them any harm. 
The agricultural labourer leaves his plough, the shoe- 
maker his last, the tailor his shears as soon as it is known 
that the hounds are hard by. Cobbett describes how he 
left his farm work the moment he heard the harriers ; 
and so it is still in every village in England. If one runs 
with the hounds there are shillings to be picked up 
by holding horses, opening gates, and showing the way 
to bewildered horsemen. In cover shooting there are 
beaters wanted with so much a day, and a luncheon or 



TORY SPORTSMEN. 287 

supper besides. No, no. Put the question to the 
peasant fair and square, without any collateral issues 
mixed up with it : Does he wish to see game destroyed, 
and shooting aboUshed ? and the answer would be 
almost universally, No. 

Before quitting the subject of shooting, I may 
mention that my first experience of driving was on the 
estates of a famous hero. Lord Strathnairn. I myself 
belong to the canine period, and was never much of a 
hand at the butts. I could kill birds pretty fairly some- 
times, but never reaUy well. On this occasion, however, 
I was lucky. I was staying with some friends in the 
neighbourhood of Newsells, Lord Strathnairn's place in 
Hertfordshire, and through them I received an invita- 
tion to shoot there. The game was not very abundant, 
nor had I been doing very well ; but near the end of 
the day, when I was standing next to Lord Strathnairn, 
I happened to kill two birds right and left as they came 
high over my head. His lordship complimented me on 
my skill, though I knew it to be exceptional ; but a 
compliment from Lord Strathnairn was praise from 
Sir Hubert Stanley. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

TORY AGRICULTURISTS.* 

Where the Allotment System Originated — Difference between Allot- 
ments and Small Holdings — The " Tatur Field " — Advantages of 
a Large System of Peasant Farming — A Call to Landowners for 
Combined Action — A Co-operative Farm Forty Years Ago — The 
Tenant Farmer, Old Style. 

From sport to agriculture is a short step, and of agri- 
cultural questions my Tory memories are pretty full. 
The whole question, which may be embraced under the 
one head of La Petite Culture, was early taken up by 
the " clergy, nobility, and gentry " (for such was the 
order in which they were always placed) in the midland 
counties, who were, with few exceptions, Tories ; and 
I think Leicestershire was almost the first, if not the 
first, English county in which the allotment system took 
root. This originally was, and should still be kept, 
something quite distinct from the small holding system, 
which IS intended to encourage the growth of a class of 
small cultivators, whether as owners or occupiers, and 
thus to distribute the land among a larger number. 
The allotment system, on the contrary, was intended 
only to supplement wages, and to compensate the 
labourers for what they had lost by the enclosure of 
wastes and commons. It was never intended that the 

* Part of this chapter has already appeared in " The Agricultural 
Labourer," by T. E. Kebbel, 4th edition, 1907. 

zSS 



TORY AGRICULTURISTS. 289 

allotment should do more than occupy the labourer's 
leisure hours — such time, that is, as he could spare from 
his daily farm work, by which he earned his weekly 
wages. At first it was made a condition that he should 
only grow vegetables and fruit ; but this it was found 
practically impossible to enforce ; and a bit of barley 
for the pig very soon came to be recognised as a legitimate 
crop, together with the cabbages and potatoes. The 
original name given to these allotments was field- 
gardens, to distinguish them from cottage gardens, 
which in some parts of England were, and are, large 
enough to serve nearly the same purpose. But that 
was not so in the Midlands, as I recollect them, and it 
was from this part of England that the allotment system 
spread as from a centre, for in those counties it satisfied 
a real want. 

The original intention of the allotment was long 
preserved, and may be so still, in the name by which 
the village people caUed it. The Kilby allotments were 
always known as " the tatur field." They consisted 
of about eight acres, which my father let off from his 
glebe in portions of about a quarter of an acre. This 
gave some thirty allotments, and as the population of 
the village was then only four hundred, of which tenant 
farmers, small tradesmen, carpenters, and shoemakers 
formed a considerable proportion, this would give an 
allotment for every other family, or, if you deduct the 
stockingers, as they were called, or framework knitters, 
a substantial flake of the population in every Leicester- 
shire village, and count in only the agricultural labourers 
pure and simple, for whose use the allotments were at 
first exclusively intended, we shaU have a rood of ground 
for nearly every family in the village. The system 



290 TORY MEMORIES. 

worked happily as long as I can recollect anything 
about it, my memory of such things dating from the 
early forties. But the " tatur field " had then been in 
existence some ten or twelve years, if not more ; and 
when, after my father's death, we left Kilby, in 1868, 
it was still flourishing, and was continued by his suc- 
cessor, John Halford. My father's example had been 
extensively followed, and before I left home I think 
there was hardly a village within twenty miles of us 
without its allotment grounds. But since that time the 
larger question of Small Holdings has come to the front, 
and what ought to be regarded as a purely economic or 
social question has drifted into politics, and become 
the battlefield of parties. 

The advantages and disadvantages of peasant farm- 
ing and peasant proprietorship have been almost ex- 
haustively discussed by experts on both sides. With the 
Sociahst theory that the labourers have a right to the 
land independently of all questions of expediency, I 
have nothing to do in these pages. You cannot rob a 
man of his birthright because of the use he is Ukely to 
make of it. That is his affair. If the peasantry possess 
this right, the certainty that if it were conceded the 
large majority would be paupers in the third generation 
cannot be urged against it. If they choose to rush upon 
their fate, they must do so. But as I recognise no such 
right in any class of the community, land, like other 
property, belonging to those who can get it, and those 
to whom they choose to leave it, I shall content myself 
with recording what I remember of the system myself 
when I lived in the country, and what I have been 
told by those who have equal or better means of 
judging. 



TORY AGRICULTURISTS. 291 

I should add that, in theory, I am wholly in favour of 
a large class of peasant farmers. The possibility of rising 
into that position is a great stimulus to the day labourer, 
and largely helps him to keep sober, frugal, and industri- 
ous. It is also a means by which the quality of our 
skilled labour, which has so greatly deteriorated of late, 
might be permanently improved, as the peasant would 
know that he could never succeed in a small farm un- 
less he were a skilled workman, and the disinclination to 
learn agricultural work demanding special skill, charac- 
teristic of the present race of labourers, might thus be 
overcome. All my Tory traditions, sympathies, and 
instincts would make me look with joy on the 
spectacle of a contented and prosperous agricultural 
peasantry spread over the soil in much larger 
numbers than at present, satisfied with their own 
position, and not seeking to rise out of it. Is this a 
dream ? 

I would fain believe not. But to make it more than 
a dream, the whole landed aristocracy must put their 
shoulders to the wheel and their hands into their pockets, 
and that, too, without delay, or the question will be 
taken out of their hands, if this indeed has not been 
done already. To see our " Territorial Constitution " 
preserved in all its essential integrity would make a 
happy man of many a true Tory ; but unless the old 
ties between the gentry and the peasantry can be re- 
vived, I fear that its future is precarious. Schemes are 
undoubtedly on foot for the compulsory creation of 
small farms by robbing the landowners of what is neces- 
sary for the purpose. I here repeat what I wrote in the 
Nineteenth Century (July, 1906), that if the landed aris- 
tocracy know in this their day the things pertaining to 



292 TORY MEMORIES. 

their peace, they will endeavour to make some combined 
move to frustrate this revolutionary project. I shall 
make no apology for quoting here what I wrote in that 
Review : 

The necessity for a powerful Conservative Party to oppose 
those measures of " dangerously Socialistic character," as the Duke 
of Devonshire described them last March, is becoming more obvious 
each day. Such a party will be required not only to-morrow and 
the next day, but for many a long year to come ; and I believe it 
can be formed, if what I will again call the " Country Party " will 
bestir themselves, and look facts and tendencies in the face. Let 
them only regain the counties and all will go well. The way to regain 
the counties is to satisfy the villages. And for this purpose a large 
and well-organised system of peasant-farmers should be inaugurated 
by the great landlords. It must not be the work of a few individuals ; 
there must be a combination of the whole body throughout the king- 
dom. Every lando\vner with an estate of a certain magnitude should 
be able to set aside so many acres to be let out in small holdings. 
If he were a pecuniary loser by the process, he would be a gainer of 
what is far more valuable, in the security which he would purchase 
for the rest of his property. Such a system as this inaugurated and 
kept on foot by the whole landed aristocracy, would bind the peasantry 
to their natural leaders, checkmate the agrarian agitators, and insure 
to the agricultural and landed interest sufficient weight in the House 
of Commons, not only to protect itself from all further assatdts, but 
to protect the other institutions of the country from that combined 
attack which his Grace of Devonshire — no violent Conservative or 
panic-stricken alarmist — believes to be at hand. This can only be 
done, of course, by the formation of a great Landowners' Association 
with a common fund for such expenses as the change may necessitate. 
The richer ones must pay for the poorer, on the same principle as 
the equalisation of rates. I am familiar with the objections that 
landlords could not afford the expense of putting up new farms and 
farm buildings, and homesteads. But it is difficult to beheve that 
among the whole landed aristocracy, from men with half a million 
a year down to men with five thousand, the money could not be 
found, if all alike were in earnest. They could do it if they liked. 
We want an organised combination, embracing the whole landlord 
class from the Tweed to the Solent, who should take the matter 
into their own hands and give the labourers what they want, without 
any legislative interference. 



TORY AGRICULTURISTS. 293 

The process of buying up small freeholds by the 
larger landowners in the neighbourhood has been going 
on for years all over the kingdom. When I was a boy 
there were in my father's parish eight small freeholds 
besides the Wistow property, which, of course, formed a 
large part of it. The owner of only one of these was not 
a peasant proprietor, but a yeoman, owning a hundred 
acres. The others were not above the rank of peasants. 
But these Uttle farms, if farms they can be called, were 
with one exception aU grass, on which the owner kept 
some sheep and a cow or two, and, as far as I can 
remember, even the man who had no other business 
did well. But most of them combined with their small 
holdings some other business, and made the one play 
into the other. The butcher had some acres of grass. 
The village carrier and the village publican had two or 
three fields. Only one man that I can remember came 
to grief while we lived in the village, and he was half 
an imbecile. Now, every one of these bits of land was 
bought up by the owner of the principal estate, and the 
most deserving peasant in the parish might look in vain 
for anything like a small farm. 

I know that the labourers possess rather exaggerated 
ideas of what can be done with "a bit o' land." " It 
was a poor tale," they would say of six or eight acres 
of land, " if a man couldn't get a living off that." They 
took no account of bad seasons, of the loss of stock, of 
any of the innumerable accidents to which agriculture 
is liable ; and here is the initial difficulty of reviving on 
a large scale the system of la petite culture as it exists 
in France and Belgium. No ordinary English labourer 
— and I am not speaking of exceptional men — could ever 
provide for a rainy day on the proceeds of a six-acre 



294 TORY MEMORIES. 

farrri. He hasn't got it in him. He couldn't live as the 
French peasant lives ; and we find, in fact, in spite of 
what I have said, that the peasantry are not very keen 
about the land, and would prefer a substantial rise in 
wages, with the certainty of a livelihood, to the risks 
and hardships of a farm. 

There are few questions, however, about which the 
evidence is so conflicting: 

The allotment system now is quite a different thing 
from what it was in my early days. The legislation of 
1887 has abolished the distinction between an allotment 
and a small holding. The occupier of an allotment is 
now brought under the operation of the Agricultural 
Holdings Acts, and his relations with the owner are 
purely commercial and business-like. The system, as I 
remember it, was so administered as to exercise a good 
moral effect. The allottee knew that if he miscon- 
ducted himself, became a notorious drunkard or evil 
liver, it was in the power of his landlord to turn him 
out at will. It was known also that to no such man 
would an allotment be granted. Let small farms be 
multiplied to any extent. Let it be possible for every 
agricultural labourer who has shown that he possesses the 
qualities necessary to ensure success to be able to look 
forward to ending his days in independence. The allot- 
ment system may contribute something towards help- 
ing him to attain this position ; but I suppose we have 
now outgrown all moral considerations, as savouring 
too much of paternal government. I am bound to add 
that so competent a judge as Lord Onslow, who has been 
kind enough to correspond with me on the subject, does 
not take the same view of it. He highly approves of 
the Act passed twenty years ago. 



TORY AGRICULTURISTS. 295 

Among my mingled agricultural and Tory memories, 
I recall the visions of a co-operative farm which was 
started many years ago on the estate of Mr. Gurdon at 
Assington in Suffolk. It is nearer forty than thirty years 
since I was there ; and whether the experiment has 
been a continued success or not, I don't know. It was 
started by Mr. Gurdon as long ago as 1830, so that when 
I first saw the land, the system had been in operation 
for more than one generation. I was shown over the 
land by a very intelligent young fellow, who amused 
me by his mode of explaining why it was disliked by the 
farmers : the labourers who were members of this co- 
operative society " wouldn't stand being swore at," 
like those who were not. At first there was only one 
farm of thirty-three acres, the company being started 
by a loan from the landlord of £400. In 1854 a new 
farm of 212 acres was taken on, assisted by a similar 
loan. The members' subscriptions were £3 apiece for 
the old farm, and £3 los. for the new one. There were 
two companies, one for each farm, the smaller consist- 
ing of twenty-one members and the larger one of thirty- 
six. How many there may be now, I don't know ; but 
it must be borne in mind that these members were all 
agricultural labourers, working for the farmers just the 
same. Their share in the co-operative business did not 
turn them into small farmers, cultivating land for them- 
selves. The farms were superintended by a manager 
under whom the members could work if they chose as 
they would do under any of the farmers. Their share 
might increase their income, but it did not alter their 
position. Thus the particular moral effect of the small 
holding system to which Lord Salisbury attached so 
much importance is here wholly wanting ; but the 



296 TORY MEMORIES. 

system had a moral side to it all the same, just like the 
allotment system. No member was allowed to receive 
parish relief, or to retain his share if convicted of a 
felonious offence, and no member was allowed to live 
more than three miles away from the parish. 

There was also at Assington a co-operative store, 
but I cannot say that my Tory sympathies went out 
very warmly either to the stores or to the farms. I am, 
perhaps, what I saw somebody called the other day, " a 
rampant Individualist." I must say I do regret the 
disappearance from our country villages of many of 
those minor industries which gave life to the place, and 
afforded a variety of interest to the little community. 
If we are always to be guided by considerations of 
political economy, why not apply that rigid science all 
round ? And certainly political economy has little to 
say in favour of small holdings — in favour, that is, of 
substituting la petite culture for la grande, all over the 
country, and establishing it permanently as the national 
system of agriculture ; and this, of course, is what the 
Socialists are aiming at. 

I am thankful to say that my Tory memories still in- 
clude the portly and pleasant figure of the regular tenant 
farmer, the man of from two to five hundred acres, who 
must inevitably disappear hke other interesting members 
of the British fauna before the hand of the Socialist. I 
remember him as he was in his happy days : 

Once tame and mild 
As grazing ox unworried in the meads — 

now, harassed by adversity, goaded by agitation, and so 
bamboozled by interested knaves, who would only make 
a catspaw of him, that he hardly knows his real friends 
from his false ones. I remember him and his hearty 



• TORY AGRICULTURISTS. 297 

welcome when he met you out shooting, and his home- 
brewed (oh, my eye !), and his cold beef, and his turkey 
at Christmas, and his half-sovereign always forthcoming 
at the charity sermon, and his brown broad-skirted 
coat, richly-flowered waistcoat, and neat grey stock- 
ings and smalls. The poor fellow has few half-sovereigns 
to spare now, all his turkeys necessarily go to market, 
and his home-brewed is fetched from the neighbouring 
pump. I allow that this fearful picture, which the 
ancients might almost have ranked with the -TrpuiixiKdi, 
Tvxai, the ne plus ultra of calamity in their estima- 
tion, is not universally true ; and I hope it may be 
growing less and less so every day. Many brave men 
have weathered the storm and reached land at last ; 
many more are still struggling with the waves ; but 
many, alas ! have sunk to rise no more. 

My memory, however, still retains the image of one 
of whom I just caught a parting glimpse — just the ends 
of his coat-tails ere he vanished from the stage — and 
it is this gUmpse which compels me to say a word or two 
about the jolly race of men I have just described, more 
perhaps, in the spirit of Cobbett than in harmony 
with my own affections. I have spoken with men who 
would say, perhaps not in so many words, that it was 
not for the like of them to shoot, who were angry with 
their sons if they dreamed of hunting, and who, in fact, 
represented the British tenant farmer as he was in the 
days of George Eliot. Now, if this mode of living had 
been continued for the first half of the nineteenth 
century, neither free trade nor agricultural depression 
would have fallen so heavily on the farmer's head. 
But they made no provision for a rainy day, and 
lived as if the Corn Laws would last for ever. Free 



298 TORY MEMORIES. 

trade, while the good times lasted, did him no harm ; 
and I remember I used to meet about the roads in 
Leicestershire young farmers, mounted on capital hunters, 
admirably got up in buckskins, boots, and black coats, 
on their way to meet Mr. Tailby's hounds, or perhaps 
the Quorn, if it was their day on that side the county : 
and not apparently, as it seemed to themselves at the 
time, living beyond their means. But they made the 
mistake of supposing that the sun would always shine. 
So they had their hunters, and, where it was open to 
them, their pointers ; their sisters had their governesses, 
and the piano — and I don't know, after all, that one can 
very much blame them. Wheat being kept up arti- 
ficially at a price which seemed to justify this expendi- 
ture, was it not in human nature to take advantage of 
it ? Many of those who did came to grief. I can recol- 
lect personally several who were sad examples of the 
truth of these remarks ; and in Leicestershire, if a man 
wanted to hunt and see anything of the run he could 
not do it very cheaply. But in the grass countries the 
farmers were not hit so hard as in the corn-growing 
districts. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

OXFORD TORYISM. 

Distinct Types of Toryism at Oxford — Sevvell — Dr. Marsham — Muckle- 
stone— Mitchell — Dr. Routh — Tommy Short — Dr. Symonds — Plump- 
tre and Punch — Dr. Pusey — His Toryism — An Apparition — New- 
man — Lost Causes and False Quantities — Mansel — Mark Pattison — 
Halford Vaughan — Brocket of St. Dunstan's. 

How far it is allowable to talk of Oxford Toryism at 
the present day, when tramcars run down the High 
Street and over Magdalen Bridge, and the University 
is encircled by a cordon of upstart villas, against which 
the spires and the towers of churches and colleges rise 
up in silent and majestic protest, is perhaps a doubtful 
point. But when I was at Oxford, progress had not laid 
its profane claws upon the venerable home of loyalty, 
religion, and scholarship. The branch line from Didcot 
to Oxford had only just been opened ; and members of 
the University going northward had still to travel part 
of the way by coach. I remember very well riding out- 
side the coach from Oxford to Rugby, and I think also 
to Blisworth, so that my readers may suppose that the 
genius loci had not at that time been very rudely dis- 
turbed. At Oxford there were two or three distinct 
types of Toryism, as probably there are still. There 
was the Tory by tradition — the man who, whatever 
opinions he held when he first came to Oxford, suc- 
cumbed to its magic : the nameless spell which lurks 

=99 



300 TORY MEMORIES. 

among its groves and cloisters, its gardens and its halls, 
redolent of romance and poetry. This was a kind of 
Toryism which did not often find expression in words, or 
in the noisy arena of party politics ; but it leavened the 
whole place, and even those whose conduct was not 
guided by it felt its influence, and tacitly and un- 
consciously acknowledged it. 

In marked contrast with this variety was the old 
high and dry Tory to whom " Church and King " was 
a shibboleth, and who could with difficulty believe in 
any kind of excellence, moral, social or political, divorced 
from the idea which it embodied. The greater majority 
of the older Dons in my time belonged to this class ; 
but among the younger ones, who were soon in turn to 
become the majority, were many disciples of the New 
School, as it was then caUed, who had imbibed Tor5dsm 
with their Catholicism as a matter of course, and who had 
not made shipwreck of their faith. " Our wrecks are upon 
every shore," said a member of the Tractarian party 
after it had seemingly gone to pieces ; but enough re- 
mained to build it up again, and these, perhaps, may be 
called the Church or Anglican Tories, men with whom 
the connection of Toryism with the Church of England 
was its chief title to their regard. Many of them drew 
the same distinction as Lord Beaconsfield drew between 
Toryism and Conservatism. One of the leaders of this 
party was William SeweU, senior tutor and sub-rector 
of Exeter College, who in his admirable novel of 
"Hawkstone" lays great stress on this distinction, 
and illustrates it in the character of his hero. 

With these three different streams of Tory thought 
some, perhaps, might include a fourth in the shape of 
what was then coming to be called " Muscular Chris- 



OXFORD TORYISM. 301 

tianity." Most of the members of this school were good 
Churchmen ; but I don't think they could fairly be 
styled Tories at all. Sewell I knew very well. He was 
a very able man ; but whether he was a good coUege 
tutor or not is another question. He set himself, as a 
Tory Churchman of the Revival, to expose and resist 
the policy of the several Governments which had fol- 
lowed the Reform Bill of 1832, in their treatment of the 
Church of England. He had nothing in common with 
the old high and dry Tory, and he only went a certain 
way with the Tractarians. He was a bitter anti- 
Romanist, and I suppose he might be taken as one of 
the truest representatives of the Via Media which that 
period produced. 

But the road was too narrow, after all. I don't 
think Sewell found that he made much way in Oxford, 
and he founded Radley as a college specially intended 
for the education of the young in his own religious prin- 
ciples. I never much took to him, and, though I shared 
his Church opinions, I found something more picturesque 
in quite a different class, who appealed at once to my 
sense of humour and my eighteenth-century sympathies. 
There was Dr. Marsham, the lay-warden of Merton, who 
had occupied this enviable position since 1826. He was 
a relation of Lord Romney, and father of the present 
police magistrate. He was a tall, handsome man, who 
used to walk about a good deal with his dogs in a stiff 
checked neckcloth and rather short trousers, such as 
were in fashion in the reign of George IV. — such as 
PeUiam wore to show off the very small feet of which 
he was so proud. Marsham was a deUghtful survival 
of that period ; the sight of him carried one back to the 
pre-Reform days when the break-up of the old constitu- 



302 TORY MEMORIES. 

tion was undreamed of ; when the old order seemed 
founded on a rock, though it turned out only a sand- 
hill. I think Dr. Marsham was once talked of as a 
suitable candidate for the University against Gladstone ; 
but though he would have made an admirable University 
member, he was not a big enough man to pit against 
Gladstone. Among my memories of Oxford Tories his 
figure stands out very conspicuously. 

Another such man was Mucklestone, Vice-Provost 
of Worcester, who, however, was in orders ; but 
he, too, used to walk out with his setters or pointers, 
dressed, of course, more like a parson that Dr. Marsham 
was, but in a style which implied that he felt himself 
quite unbound by any clerical rule upon the subject 
such as was generally observed in those days by the 
college authorities. He, too, belonged to the golden 
age when men slumbered peacefully under the shadow 
of ancient institutions in bhssful unconsciousness of 
the coming earthquake. Another excellent specimen 
of the old high and dry man-of-the-world school was 
Mitchell, at one time Fellow and Tutor of Lincoln, 
afterwards Vice-Principal of Magdalen Hall. He was 
Public Orator, and a noted authority on logic ; but I 
question if he was up to date in " Sir William Hamilton " 
or " Mansel." I have heard him lecture, and I doubt 
if his explanation of " second intentions " would have 
commended itself to those eminent authorities. He 
was much looked up to by the old Tories, and was 
popular with the undergraduates, being lenient to what 
were called youthful indiscretions. He was a fine, 
portly man, would have made an excellent head of a 
House, and in former days, melioribus annis, he might 
have been a Bishop. 



OXFORD TORYISM. 303 

A very different character indeed, and one whom I 
did not know personally, but of whom everybody spoke 
with the greatest respect and veneration, was old Dr. 
Routh, President of Magdalen, elected in 1791. He 
was in residence when Dr. Johnson visited Oxford, and 
perfectly remembered seeing him run up the steps of 
University College when he was going to dine in hall with 
his friend Mr. Scott. Perhaps this was the very occasion 
on which Johnson drank three bottles of port in Univer- 
sity Common room, " without being the worse for it." 
Dr. Routh had witnessed also the ceremony of drinking 
to the king over the water, a practice continued 
in the Magdalen Common room down, at all events, to 
the death of Charles Edward in 1788. I did once see 
Dr. Routh as he was being wheeled about in his chair. 
That is a memory of which I am really proud. To have 
gazed on one who had seen Dr. Johnson at Oxford, and 
had shared in the last empty honours ever paid to the 
Stuarts in England, was indeed a privilege. To drink 
to the king over the water was to pass your glass, after 
you had filled it, over the finger-bowl. Dr. Routh died, 
I think, in 1855, having survived, said Newman, " to 
recall to a faithless generation what was the theology 
of their forefathers." He might also have recalled to 
them the Toryism of their forefathers, such as was pro- 
fessed by Mr. Pitt and Mr. Canning. Routh was one of 
those Tory Churchmen to whom the torch, burning 
dimly indeed, but never extinct, had been handed down 
through Jones of Nayland and Sikes of Guilsborough, 
and he connects one directly with that " ancient rehgion " 
which, according to Newman, had before the middle of 
the nineteenth century nearly died out. 

Tommy Short, as he was familiarly called by every- 



304 TORY MEMORIES. 

body in Oxford, was a Fellow of Trinity, and a well- 
known figure in the town. Tommy, I believe, was a 
fine scholar. He took a double first in 1812, and was a 
Tory of the pre-Reform era, though he probably im- 
bibed his ideas rather from Eldon and Wetherell than 
from either Canning or Pitt. He used to dress in black, 
except his neckcloth, which was some check pattern, 
the one vanity which the high and dry permitted them- 
selves. He, too, wore quite short trousers and low 
shoes, and seemed a relic of the past even more than 
Marsham. Short was a very able man, but he liked to 
moisten his classics with a glass of port, and after that 
join in a rubber of whist. I have played whist in the 
Common room at Trinity with Thomas looking over 
my shoulder, but never played at his table ; and, indeed, 
by that time he had come to prefer quadrille, to which 
he sat down on the evening in question after he had 
watched our game long enough. He was, in his day, 
quite a noted character in Oxford, and was a perfect 
specimen of the old Oxford Tory with all his honest 
prejudices, all his good port, and all his sound Latin. 

Before I proceed to a younger generation, I must 
notice another of the old ones, in the person of Dr. 
Symonds, the Warden of Wadham and Vice-Chancellor, 
a very big man, who used to ride an equally stout cob, 
and was a very familiar object to all the undergraduates. 
I have often heard from men who were in residence in 
1848, the year of European revolution, that some 
University wags pinned up on the door of the Union 
a revolutionary proclamation in which Symonds figured. 
I can't remember it all, but I recollect a couple of 
sentences : " The Proctors have resigned their usurped 
authority. The Vice-Chancellor has fled on horseback." 



OXFORD TORYISM, 305 

It purported to be issued by a provisional committee, 
among the members of which was " Bossum Operative." 
Now, Bossum was the Brasenose porter. I must not, how- 
ever, forget Plumptre, the Head of University, of whom 
it was said that when Thackeray apphed to him, as 
Vice-Chancellor, for leave to deliver his lectures at 
Oxford, and told him he was a contributor to Punch, he 
inquired gravely if Punch was not " a ribald publication." 
I had the honour of Dr. Pusey's acquaintance, and 
I remember calling on him in his lodgings off the City 
Road when he went to live there at the time of the 
cholera in the East End of London. Dr Pusey was a 
gentleman of good family, who had been fond of hunt- 
ing and shooting in his youth. There was nothing of 
the Don about him whatever. He was one of those 
Oxford Tories who, like Sewell, regarded politics chiefly 
from a Churchman's point of view, and, like Dr. Routh, 
he supported Gladstone to the last. He was on his 
committee in 1865, and by that time he had ceased to 
feel any confidence in either the will or the power of the 
Conservative party to uphold the best interests of the 
Church of England. But the Oxford revival of 1833 
was a Tory movement, and Pusey was a Tory of the 
Gladstone stamp, such a Tory as Gladstone was when he 
thundered against the Reform Bill in the Oxford Union, 
such a Tory as was the author of " The Church in Its 
Relation to the State," such a Tory as Mr. Gladstone 
still continued to be when returned for the University 
of Oxford in 1847, beating Mr. Round by 173 votes. But 
Dr. Pusey's Toryism depended so much upon his 
Anglicanism that he had ceased to regard the Conser- 
vatives as true Tories any longer. This did not prevent 
him from having a high opinion of Lord Beaconsfield, 



3o6 TORY MEMORIES. 

of whom he often spoke very kindly. He thought that 
the PubUc Worship Regulation Act was rather the doing 
of the Archbishop than of the Prime Minister ; nor 
did he forget the tone in which the Church of England 
was spoken of in " Sybil," or the portrait of Mr. St. Lys, 
the High Church clergyman. 

Dr. Pusey was well acquainted with members of my 
own family, from whom I have heard many interesting 
particulars relating to him. But the following story is 
not exclusively traceable to any individual. It is no 
secret, and my daughter heard it from some friends 
abroad two or three years ago. Dr. Pusey firmly believed 
himself once to have seen the apparition of a departed 
friend ; and it is impossible to doubt that he had 
experienced something which, rightly or wrongly, he 
sincerely believed to be a supernatural visitation. The 
story, though it has never before been printed, is 
generally known, and I need therefore make no apology 
for introducing it here. He was taking a friend's duty 
for a time while the friend went away for a rest to some 
other village in the neighbourhood. Dr. Pusey stayed 
in the parsonage, and was one day working in the garden, 
when, on looking up, he saw his friend coming towards 
him. He supposed that he had come over just to 
see how things were going on and to have a talk with 
himself ; but before he could speak, the visitor made a 
communication too solemn to be repeated here, and 
walked away towards the house. Dr. Pusey, thinking 
only that his friend's mind had been affected by his 
illness, followed him into the house for luncheon. When 
he got in he asked the servant, " Where is your master ? " 
"Master has not been here to-day, sir," said the man. 
Still Dr. Pusey thought nothing of this ; but when he went 



OXFORD TORYISM. 307 

down into the village he was informed by one of 
the farmers that the absent vicar had died that morning, 
about a quarter to one, the very time when Dr. Pusey 
had seen him in the garden. A relation of my own 
now living at Oxford, who had previously heard it from 
another quarter, asked Dr. Pusey, with whom she was 
closely acquainted, whether it was true, and he replied 
that it was. 

Dr. Pusey has been charged with encouraging young 
girls to neglect their home duties, and even leave their 
famihes, in order to join sisterhoods, and embrace the 
rehgious life. My own memory enables me to contra- 
dict this report, or, at least, to show that Dr. Pusey, 
before giving any such advice, was very careful to ascer- 
tain what the young lady's position in her own family 
really was — whether an only daughter, whether her 
parents were old or infirm and stood in need of her 
assistance, and when these questions were answered in 
the affirmative, the votary's inclinations, however laud- 
able in themselves, were discouraged. I know that 
this happened in the case of a near relation, and I have 
no reason to believe it was a solitary instance. 

Dr. Pusey is well known, in common with Keble and 
Newman, to have always recognised the influence of the 
Waverley novels in leading to the Anglican revival. 
Keble, no doubt, was under the spell when he wrote 
" The Christian Year," wrongly, as already pointed out, 
attributed to myself ( ! ), and there can be no doubt of 
their effect upon the mind of Hurrell Froude ; but, 
quite apart from the leaders of the movement, these 
immortal works must have prepared the pubhc mind in 
general for the seed which was about to fall upon 
it. 



3o8 TORY MEMORIES. 

Nev/man himself I never met ; and I cannot include 
him among my personal memories ; but I have always 
treasured up one sentence of his which occurs in a letter 
to a lady who had consulted him about the Roman and 
Anglican systems. He said, " If our Lord left a visible 
Church on earth, I believe it is the Catholic Roman 
Church," but he added that the question was beset with 
so many difficulties that he would not incur the respon- 
sibility of advising anyone to leave the Church of 
England for the Church of Rome. This, I think, runs 
a little counter to the popular prejudice about Newman. 

Oxford has been called " the home of lost causes." 
I fail to see the justice of this description. The cause 
espoused by the Oxford movement of 1833 is so far 
from being a lost cause that, rightly understood, it has 
been victorious along the whole line. To appreciate 
the result one must be able, as I am, to remember the 
condition of the Church and the clergy, especially in 
the rural districts, as they were when Newman left 
the Church of England in despair, and as they are now. 
It is not all at once that the fruits of a great movement 
ploughing up soil which had lain fallow for a century, 
and disturbing settled opinions to which long habit 
and custom had given the force of principles, are visible 
on the surface. More than a whole generation was to 
pass away before the thorough transformation which the 
Church was destined to experience began to manifest 
itself, and even after the lapse of two more it is not yet 
complete. The change has been so gradual as almost 
to escape notice. It has, of course, been accompanied 
by innovations and irregularities of so startling a charac- 
ter as to attract universal attention. But these are 
only the rocks which the stream encounters in its course, 



OXFORD TORYISM. 309 

foaming and fretting round them so as to fix the gazer's 
eye, while its main current flows quietly and smoothly 
on with scarce a trickle or a murmur to show us that 
it really moves. 

Lost causes may have come home to die at Oxford ; 
but the Anglo-Catholic cause is certainly not among 
them. The aphorism may possibly be justified by the 
fate of Latin prose. Elegiacs, we have been told, are 
already a lost cause. I write these words with pain, 
for I have many pleasant memories connected with 
longs and shorts ; and I shall never regret that I was 
guilty of two false quantities in eight lines, when I 
remember that the wretched man who failed to detect 
them was not a Tory. When " causes " of any kind 
fall into the hands of such men as these, no wonder 
they are lost ! 

Mansel, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's, I remember 
well. He was a disciple of Sir William Hamilton, who 
really revolutionised the metaphysic and logic of the 
Oxford Schools. He was a very able and a very witty 
man, and perhaps his verses published at Commemora- 
tion, in ridicule, if I remember right, of the German pro- 
fessorial system, then much favoured by the Univer- 
sity Commissioners, and advocated by that very able 
man, Halford Vaughan, Professor of Modern History, 
will be remembered as long as his logic. Mansel, like 
the healthy old Tory he was, defended the old collegiate 
system and tutorial instruction. I can't remember 
many of his verses, but they began in this way : 

Professors we from over the sea 
From the land where professors in plenty be, 
The land which boasts one Kant with a K 
And a great many cants with a C. 



310 TORY MEMORIES. 

Mansel took a double first in company with his old 
schoolfellow, Paul Parnell, who died, I think, in Aus- 
tralia ; and he was soon established as the leading 
science coach at Oxford. One of his favourite pupils 
was Palin, of St. John's, and when my own time came 
to go into training, I went into that stable. 

I believe my science papers did my trainer justice ; 
but I had neglected other subjects, and Cowley Powles 
demonstrated with cruel precision that I had never read 
my Livy since I left school. The consequence was that 
I dropped into a second, and was only saved from a 
worse fate, as Mark Pattison not obscurely hinted, by a 
copy of Latin elegiacs, which pleased the examiners 
and caused me to say just now that I had many pleasant 
memories connected with that classic metre. 

Mark Pattison I knew well. He was the head of 
my college after I left Exeter, and I saw a good deal 
of him afterwards in London. I remember his saying 
what a curious thing it was that no book had ever 
been written with the exclusive object of showing the 
benefits which Christianity had conferred upon the 
world. I suggested Swift's reason for not abolishing 
Christianity, which seemed to tickle him. 

I have just mentioned Halford Vaughan. Him, too, I 
knew in the country ; for he was very fond of hunting, 
and used to take a house in my father's parish, near to 
Wistow, for that purpose. It was said by somebody 
that Halford Vaughan and Edward Twistleton were the 
two cleverest men in England. It is something to have 
known one of them, at all events. Vaughan used to 
hunt with the Vale of White Horse, and on non-lecture 
days, which in his reign were pretty frequent, he 
might often be seen trotting out as fast as an Oxford 



OXFORD TORYISM. 311 

hack would carry him to meet the V.VV.H. or the old 
Berkshire. 

I did not know Brocket of St. Dunstan's person- 
ally ; but he was the hero of a story too good to be 
omitted, and was himself a distinguished man. I was 
once staying with a friend down in Wiltshire, when I 
met a rollicking sporting parson, who had been at St. 
Dunstan's when Brocket was tutor there. There are 
some elements of improbability in the story as he told 
it, I must own, but I have no doubt that the facts were 
substantially correct. While an undergraduate at St. 
Dunstan's he was dining out at a dinner party where 
Brocket was present — such was his tale — and when the 
dessert was placed on the table, the children came down, 
as usual in those days, and were expected to kiss the 
company all round. One little girl refused to kiss 
Mr. Brocket, whereupon she was scolded and told to kiss 
the gentleman at once. She still refused, and being 
asked the reason why, gave as her grievance that when 
she went out walking with Mary, " Mr. Brocket always 
kisses Mary and he never kisses me." Poor Brocket ! 
He was not a popular man in college, and, what is more, 
at this time he was Proctor. And the little girl's words 
were spoken out loud before a large party. 

Off rushed my informant, as soon as he could decently 
get away, flew back to coUege, and burst in upon a 
supper party which he knew to be going on with this 
delightful tale. The men waited till they knew that 
Brocket was back in his rooms, and then they salhed 
forth in a body and sang the words under his windows : 
" He always kisses Mary, and he never kisses me." 
The hank which they thus acquired over this unhappy 
Don was a joy to those many undergraduates who hated 



312 TORY MEMORIES. 

him. I don't know how long the joke was kept up ; 
but I remember that when I was at Oxford some years 
afterwards, the story was still in general circulation, 
though it was not till much later that I fell in with the 
gifted author of it, who, I presume, was recording a per- 
sonal experience. It may have been, and probably 
was, embellished ; but that some little Mary had been 
neglected and some grown-up Mary had been kissed is 
what, I sadly fear, we must believe. 

Brocket, I believe, was a severe proctor. How 
different from the good little Pro. in my own college, 
who, when I unfortunately met with an accident among 
some rude boys at Godstow, having in lawful self-defence 
received a blow in the eye, which betrayed itself in 
the usual way, gently observed, " You know, Mr. Kebbel, 
a man may go through life without doing these things." 
And that was all he said ; a broad-minded, genial Tory, 
with wide human sympathies ! 



CHAPTER XX. 



TORY INNS. 



Rival Inns — Tory Inns on the Road to London — A Tory Tavern- 
keeper's Horror of Mechanics' Institutes — Tory Shops and Whig 
Shops — A Candid Tory Fishmonger — The Engine-driver and the 
Statesman. 

In his description of the inns at Eatanswill, Dickens 
was drawing no fancy picture. I remember the times 
when party feehng ran quite as high. In the palmy 
days of " the Road " all travellers were familiar with 
the rivalry which existed between Whig and Tory post- 
ing houses. Not that they were called by those names. 
They were blue or yellow, or green or red, as the case 
might be, the Whig buff being always called yellow. 
The distinction still survives in holes and corners of 
old England, and in the far west you may still, 
here and there, find some ancient hostelry which clings 
to its political traditions. I am old enough to re- 
member the last of the posting days, when the steam- 
engine was just beginning to tread on the heels of 
the post-horse, and to supplant the stage-coach, as the 
motor-car supplants the omnibus. We used at one 
time to post up to London from Leicestershire in 
an old-fashioned chariot of our own, by way of 
Northampton, Woburn, Dunstable, St. Albans, and 
Bar net. All along the road there were inns which had 
a party bias. 

313 



314 TORY MEMORIES. 

But before describing what I can remember of those 
days, I must premise that in Leicester itself, which 
was our county town, the blue inn and the green inn 
had no dealings with each other. The " Three Crowns " 
was the headquarters of the Tory interest, the " Bell " 
being patronised by the green faction— for in Leicester 
green was the Whig colour. As most of the Leicestershire 
gentry were Tories, the " Crowns " used to boast of 
the larger show of private carriages in the stable 
yard on Saturdays, and did more, I should think, in 
the way of luncheons ; but then the " Bell " had the 
better cook, and latterly I think the hunting men who 
came to Leicester lived at the " Bell." But at the 
time I am thinking of the " Crowns " was the leading 
inn. I can see old Bishop now — there were no 
" managers " or companies in those days : the landlord 
stood at the door to welcome you himself — and Bishop 
was the beau ideal of the old-fashioned Boniface. A 
stout, fresh-coloured man, who valued his own posi- 
tion as landlord of the great Tory inn in the great town 
of Leicester, and held himself entitled to look down 
upon all the green ragamuffins who frequented the 
" Bell." He felt that he represented the aristocracy 
of the county, the real blue blood. And there he stood 
at his door : looking all this and more, ready to ex- 
change a joke with his more valued customers, who 
allowed him a good many liberties, but quite ready 
to stand upon his dignity with others not entitled in 
his eyes to equal familiarity. Those were not the 
days of photography, or I should certainly have had 
his portrait. 

All the way up to London, if I remember right, 
the post-boys belonging to the Tory inns in one town 



TORY INNS. 315 

drove to the Tory inns in the next. At Northampton 
it was the " George/' which, I beheve, is still flourish- 
ing. At Newport Pagnell, the next stage, it was the 
" Swan." At Woburn the " George " again. At Dun- 
stable the " Sugar Loaf." At St. Albans I have for- 
gotten, but I think it was the " Verulam Arms." At 
Barnetitwas the " Green Man and Still," the opposition 
house being the " Red Lion " ; and I recollect that 
once when I was a very small boy we were driven 
to the " Red Lion " by mistake, and the post-boy was 
promptly ordered to turn back to the " Green Man." 
I don't know how long these distinctions survived 
in London ; but I have known one London inn-keeper 
of the deepest Tory dye, who was not ashamed to con- 
fess his faith in any company. He kept an ordinary 
in Newgate Street — the same house, I believe, which 
Charles Lamb used to frequent — and I remember some 
choice sentiments from his lips. I often dined there, 
for you got a very good dinner indeed at a very cheap 
rate, the landlord making his profit out of the ale, 
wine, and whiskey consumed by his customers. A 
propos of this, he told us one day of two men who used 
to dine there regularly, eat all they could, and drink 
only water, and who, on going out, said to him more 
than once : " Landlord, we can't think how you make 
this pay." But this is not what I was going to mention. 
We were talking one day of the early closing move- 
ment, to which he expressed himself as strongly 
opposed. " What's the good," he said, " of letting 
young men go away much earlier ? They only go to 
public-houses or casinos ; or else to Mechanics' Insti- 
tutes, which is ten thousand times worse." After this, 
the reader will not be surprised to hear of the condi- 



3i6 TORY MEMORIES. 

tion to which he was reduced one evening when a City 
election had gone against us. I found him standing 
in front of his house, in the middle of the street, 
without his hat, with his hands raised to heaven, 
after the manner of ^Eneas, in an attitude of silent 
despair and unutterable mental agony. I shall never 
forget him. " Respicis hcBc ?" he seemed to be saying 
to the Ruler of the Universe. 

How many of the old inns that I have mentioned 
are now standing I don't know. The last man who ever 
sought refreshment at the " Crowns " was offered a 
jam puff for supper, the only article of food the house 
contained. It is pulled down now, and other build- 
ings erected on the site. I know nothing of the others. 
All that I have named were, in the days referred to, 
comfortable quarters, like the " Saracen's Head " at 
Towcester, where you were sure of a good dinner, good 
wine, and good beds. I remember sleeping all night 
at the Woburn inn, which, I suppose, however, was not 
a Tory one, and walking in the abbey gardens after- 
wards. I hear that bicycling and motoring are likely 
to resuscitate some of these old country inns, but they 
can't revive the life which formerly throbbed in them : 
the carriage and four rattling up to the front with some 
great man inside, and the cheery cry of " Horses on," 
which set all the ostlers in a bustle ; the mail coach with 
its cargo of passengers all alighting to partake of the 
coach dinner, which was always very good, though it 
had to be eaten in a hurry ; the constant stream of 
traffic, the horses, the waggons, the bagman's gig, 
the drover's herd — these will not come back with the 
motors. I am glad I can remember that I once rode 
in that odd little vehicle called a post-chaise, or I should 



TORY INNS. 317 

never have appreciated Mr. Pickwick's journey from 
Bristol to Birmingham. 

Not only were there Tory inns in the old days : 
there were Tory shops and Whig shops. I remember 
very well when a blue family in the county bought 
some grocery, I think it was, from a shopkeeper in 
Leicester whose principles were notoriously green, that 
their conduct was very generally condemned. The 
circumstance was a good deal talked about, and fears 
were expressed in some quarters that the example might 
be catching. One of the principal booksellers in the 
town was one of the few remaining shopkeepers who 
hung up a sign over his doors — namely, the Bible and 
the Crown. There was a blue tailor and a green tailor, 
a blue shoemaker and a green shoemaker, a blue 
draper and a green draper. I don't think matters 
went so far as they did at Eatanswill, or that there 
was a green aisle and a blue aisle in any of the churches ; 
but in other respects the picture drawn in " Pickwick " 
is hardly exaggerated. 

An influential Tory shopkeeper was then an im- 
portant personage, as to some extent he may be still. 
Pike, the fishmonger, had, I think, nearly all the 
county custom. He was a clever, jocular, impudent 
fellow, who exchanged jokes with all the gentlemen 
who visited his shop, and was allowed a good many 
freedoms on account of his colour. One of the county 
members, remarking one day on some pheasants which 
hung up in the shop, was told that he would see some 
finer ones if he would step into the back room. He did 
so, and found himself in an airy apartment literally 
loaded with pheasants. " Yes, they are fine birds," 
said the Tory member. " They all come from Prest- 



3i8 TORY MEMORIES. 

wold, sir," said the Tory salesman, with a grin. Now, 
Prestwold was the member's seat, and the birds were 
the produce of a poaching raid upon his covers. The 
member could only smile and look pleasant, for it would 
never have done to quarrel with Pike. 

Party spirit penetrated into every hole and corner 
of the community. It reached even railway guards, 
stokers, and engine drivers. I remember the reply of 
a Midland driver who was proud of his engine and of 
himself, and regarded railways with veneration. We 
were talking in his presence about an eminent states- 
man, now deceased, who inspired both love and hatred 
in a very uncommon degree. He often travelled by 
the train which the engine-driver steered, and some- 
one said, in joke, " Couldn't you contrive to drive 
over him ? " " Such a death," said the man, " would 
be too good for him ! " 



CHAPTER XXI. 

OUR VILLAGE. 
ToTTpiv eV elprjVT]'^, irplv iXdeiv vla^ A-^aimV 

The Village Described — The Vicar — Farmer Dryman — John Ashcot the 
Yeoman — The Village Blacksmith — Farmer Wright — A True Blue — 
The Feast — Christmas Celebrations — The Parish Clerk — An Anti- 
nomian Dissenter — A Versatile Constable — Village Termagants — 
The Scythe and the Flail — A Happy and Contented Population — The 
Clothing Club — The Old Poor Law and the New. 

I HAVE introduced my native village in previous chap- 
ters, but I think some further notice of it may form 
a fitting sequel to the rambling recollections which 
have carried me so far from home. I now return to 
the spot whence I started when I received the letter 
which determined my future career. One who can 
recollect village life as it was sixty years ago can recol- 
lect something which is fast passing away, if it has not 
already vanished ; and with that respect for antiquity 
which becomes a Tory, I am impelled to recall some 
features of it while they still remain fresh in my memory. 
I have, as a general rule, in these reminiscences, given 
the real names of the persons and places introduced 
in them. In the following description they appear 
under various pseudonyms, the reasons for which will 
perhaps become apparent to my readers as the picture 
gradually unfolds itself. This chapter is strictly con- 
sistent with what has gone before, because Tor5dsm 
is closely associated with the history of the peasantry, 

319 



320 TORY MEMORIES. 

and the measures undertaken for their benefit both in 
the eighteenth and the nineteenth century. It may be 
news to some of my readers that something very like 
" three acres and a cow " was suggested by Mr. Pitt 
himself. 

Some of the remarks on this subject which will 
be found further on are, in substance, a repetition of 
what I pointed out in my little work styled " The Old 
and The New," in the chapter on the peasantry ; but 
my personal recollections of the effect produced upon 
the rural mind by the legislation of 1834, as soon as 
it came into full operation, must not be omitted from 
my Tory memories, contrasting, as it does, with the al- 
leviations of poverty proposed by the rival political party. 

Our village lies in a shallow valley in the heart of 
the midland counties. You descend to it from the 
high road by a narrow lane leading down to a small 
stream which sixty years ago was crossed only by a foot- 
bridge, and in a heavy flood was impassable. Imme- 
diately beyond it the road made a sharp turn, and the 
village street, or, as it was always called, " the town 
street," lay straight before you. On the other side 
of the village the ground sank again down to a consider- 
able brook, which in those days held plenty of coarse 
fish — pike, perch, and chub. At the time referred to, 
the population of the village was about four hundred, 
the cottagers consisting in almost equal proportions of 
farm labourers and framework knitters, or " stock- 
ingers," who hired their frames from the county town, 
and took their work in when completed. The singing 
of their frames was a pleasant, cheerful sound, not un- 
hke the note of the yellow-hammer ; and as in those 
days a large amount of work was given out by the 



OUR VILLAGE. 321 

wholesale firms, they were seldom silent. You may 
listen for them in vain now. There were, of course, 
as in all country villages, the usual small tradesmen, 
the butcher, the baker, the blacksmith, the carpenter, 
the shopkeeper, and the innkeeper. The church and 
the parsonage stood at a little distance from the village, 
the latter embowered in trees, so skilfully arranged 
that the house and grounds at a little distance might 
have been mistaken for the Hall. 

I have already introduced my reader to the vicar. 
I must be pardoned if filial partiality seduces me into 
further notice of him. He was not a sportsman ; but 
he was fond of his garden, fond of his pigs and his 
poultry and of the small farm, consisting of about fifty 
acres of glebe, which he kept in his own hands. " A 
man he was to all the country dear," and at the time I 
am writing of was about sixty years of age. He had 
held the living then for nearly a quarter of a century ; 
and besides being a general favourite with the cot- 
tagers and the farmers, he had all the influence of 
the squire at his back. The vicar winked at the 
faults of his parishioners perhaps a little too much ; 
but he was, naturally, none the less beloved on that 
account. The two livings, which he held together, were 
not worth more than £300 a year ; but he had a small 
fortune of his own, which enabled him to live on equal 
terms with the neighbouring gentry and Squarsons, to 
dine with them and give dinners in return, and to lose 
half a sovereign at whist without being guilty of any 
gross extravagance. 

In these remote country villages, seven or eight 
miles from any market town, before the days of rail- 
roads, penny papers, or primary schools, all things 
v 



322 TORY MEMORIES. 

must have always seemed the same from a very remote 
period. Unaffected by the outer world, and by that 
vague but irritating censorship called public opinion, 
the idiosyncrasy of the villagers was allowed to develop 
itself freely ; and though we could not boast a Mrs. Poy- 
ser, the parson could hardly make his round among the 
cottages and farmhouses, especially if he went about 
tea-time, without having something racy to repeat to 
his family at dinner. 

At the bottom of the village or " town," as the 
street turned off towards the high road aforesaid, 
dwelt Farmer Dryman, an excellent specimen of the 
old school. He was the clergyman's churchwarden and 
right-hand man in the parish ; but he was a somewhat 
testy old gentleman, and looked with a very sour coun- 
tenance on the parson's youngsters when they climbed 
over into his stack-yard or fell-to talking with the men 
threshing in the big barn, interrupting their work, as 
he complained. But his wife, a very clever woman, 
was the character of the village. The house faced the 
road, but there was a narrow side window at one end 
which looked straight up the street. Here she was 
to be seen at all hours of the day ; and not a soul could 
move about the village, nor a cart stop at a farm- 
house, nor a visitor call at the parsonage, but she knew 
all about it. The window was known to the natives 
as " the turnpike," and it is needless to say that the 
owner of it was mistress of all the scandal which the 
parish afforded, and knew of all the births and deaths 
— who were coming into the world and who were going^ 
out of it — sooner even than the parish clerk. The old 
man belonged to that old-fashioned race of farmers 
who left field sports to the " quality," and the first 



OUR VILLAGE. 323 

time he heard of his son going out hunting he refused to 
eat his dinner. 

Nearly opposite Dryman's was the abode of a very 
different kind of man. Dryman used to come to church 
dressed very much hke Mr. Poyser, with drab coat 
and breeches, and a richly-flowered waistcoat. His 
opposite neighbour, who was comparatively a newcomer, 
went in for gentility, always dressed in black on 
Sunday, with a black satin waterfall cravat and no 
shirt collar, as you may see in the portraits of Prince 
Albert and Charles Dickens. There was a strong spice 
of radicalism in this vain man, and he had been heard 
to say that he believed Latin was a very much over- 
rated language. 

Further along, on the same side of the street, stood 
the house of our one yeoman, old John Ashcot. It was 
a substantial red brick house, covered with lichens, with 
a capital kitchen garden, and, as Harriet Smith says in 
" Emma," " with two parlours, two very good parlours 
indeed," and everything substantial about it. The 
Ashcots had been on the land for generations, but they 
made no pretence of ever having been other than they 
then were. They were comfortable people, and the 
Ashcot of my time, then about fifty, after dinner on a 
fine day, loved to stand out in the street in front of his 
door, slightly swajdng to and fro under the influence 
of brown brandy, but quite conversible and affable, 
with a beaming smile for every passer-by. He was not 
a man with a very wide range of ideas, and had views of 
public affairs when they chanced to come before him 
which were, no doubt, racy of the soil, but savoured 
rather of the stable and the pig-sty than of any wider 
or more imperial field of thought. He was the author 



324 TORY MEMORIES. 

of the theory quoted on another page, that it was no 
good having soldiers if they did not fight ; they were 
only eating their heads off. His wife had the reputa- 
tion of liking a drop as well as her husband, though 
she showed no signs of it in her face ; but then, as 
Mrs. Dryman said, " she was a white drinker." 

Further up the village on the same side of the way 
was the blacksmith's forge, the blacksmith himself 
being a good-humoured, beery man, who, when rebuked 
by the vicar for not going oftener to church, replied 
most respectfully that the parson had all his custom, 
the Methodies not standing high in his opinion. He 
did a very good business, and was a very popular man, 
one of the few to whom the parson's children were 
allowed to go out to tea at the village feast. Nearly 
opposite the blacksmith's dwelt a small dairy farmer, 
loved for his Stilton cheese, and feared for his short- 
horned bull, who was generally turned out with the cows 
in a field at the top of the village, through which ran 
the public road. None of the cross-roads in that part 
of the country were divided from the fields by hedges, 
so that the sheep and cattle often came upon the road, 
and the lowering countenance of the bull might be 
seen sometimes blocking a gateway, a sight which never 
failed to make the vicar's wife turn back from her 
evening walk. There were many stories about bulls in 
that grazing district ; and had not the Ashcot bull gone 
for old Sally Cripps, who had hardly a rag to her back, 
and torn " her best dress," as she averred, to the vicar's 
intense amusement, before she could escape through a 
gap ? At the top corner of the street dwelt the last of 
the five farmers who constituted the middle class of 
the Uttle community — old Master Turner, as he was 



OUR VILLAGE. 325 

commonly called^ who likewise kept a bull so strongly 
suspected of vicious propensities that the ladies of the 
parsonage never dared to take the footpath across his 
fields. He was a good old soul, but I am afraid he was 
not very prosperous, and didn't enjoy his cakes and 
ale at Christmas and midsummer as one could wish 
him to have done. 

At the Grange, a field or two outside of the village, 
lived Farmer Wright. He was a good farmer, and in 
some respects a shrewd, sensible man ; but he was 
quite uneducated, and his way of describing his own 
age was peculiar. " I'm three years younger nor Sir 
Henry," he would say ; "I allers was." \Vhether he 
thought that the simple assertion contained in the 
first half of the sentence stood in need of the confirma- 
tion afforded by the second ; or whether, owing to his 
inability to pursue any long and difficult train of reason- 
ing, he had halted in the persuasion that you might be 
three years younger than a fellow-creature one day, 
and three years older on another, I cannot say. But 
such was his invariable formula. In other ways, the 
mystery of existence seemed to puzzle him. He had 
just brought down a flock of sheep from some neighbour- 
ing pasture fields into the meadows by the brook already 
mentioned. That night there came a heavy rain, and in 
the morning the meadows were flooded. I came upon 
him as he leaned on a gate and looked over at the flood 
with a thoughtful expression on his broad, red face. He 
told me what had happened, without any tinge of anger 
or vexation, but with an air of profound bewilderment. 
" It seems so hodd," he said. If the event had not 
shaken his belief in the moral government of the world, 
it helped, I think, to produce a confused and despon- 



326 TORY MEMORIES. 

dent frame of mind in the man. He finally solved the 
riddle by hanging himself in the cow-house, along of 
being cheated in the sale of a calf. Like all our farmers, 
he was a good Tory, and died lamented. 

Another hearty politician, who had no doubt about 
anything, lived in a snug farmhouse at the back of one 
of the yards already mentioned. We all knew him 
too well to make any questioning about his principles 
necessary ; but if questioned, as he was sometimes at 
the farmer's ordinary on Saturday, he silenced curiosity 
by the bluff announcement that " his grandfeyther 
wur blue, that his feyther wur blue, and that he wur 
blue hisself, as also his ladders, carts, and waggons." 
This uncompromising and far-reaching declaration of 
Tory principles was always received with great delight 
by the majority of the company, who expected it, and 
if any green individual who was present attempted to 
scoff, he was promptly sat upon by these excellent men 
full of roast beef and brown ale. In towns a man's 
angles get so soon rubbed smooth that one seldom meets 
with these dainty bits of character except among the 
village folks, whose nature in those days wore all its 
original freshness. 

I remember being driven home one Sunday evening 
from a neighbouring village by a labourer, who was em- 
ployed for the purpose, the coachman being ill. As I sat 
beside him in the dogcart, he told me at great length 
of an extraordinary story which he had just heard. 
He had been to church that morning, and had heard 
the story of Daniel in the lion's den, which he had never 
heard before, and which had made a deep impression 
on him. He repeated it to me just as if he had read it 
in the newspaper, and was retailing a long report for my 



OUR VILLAGE. 327 

benefit. " Now this liere Dannel, I suppose," were the 
words with which he commenced every fresh paragraph, 
so to speak, and you would have thought he was re- 
counting some remarkable and surprising circumstance 
which had happened in the adjoining county. " This 
here Dannel," however, seemed after many repetitions 
to recall him to a sense of his own unworthiness. He 
allowed that he was in the gall of bitterness and the 
bond of iniquity, and finally declared his regret that 
he was constrained to dwell with Mesech. 

I remember that in those days the village children 
would commonly call their fathers by their Christian 
names. Our village carrier and publican, John Archer, 
was always " old John " to his sons and daughters. The 
carpenter, George Naylor, was always George. I re- 
member the carrier's eldest son saying to me a day 
or two after the death of his eldest sister, who kept 
her father's house, " Ah, sir, this has been a bad week 
for John ; he's lost poor Loo, and now the old mare's 
gone." John himself was a great character ; but his 
sa5dngs depend for their flavour on one's knowledge of 
the man himself, without which they would probably 
fall fiat. 

At midsummer came the festival already mentioned, 
the village feast, which to the unsophisticated inhabi- 
tants of that early date, unspoiled by travel, and ig- 
norant of anything better, was an annual event of 
great solemnity and importance. It began on Sunday 
and lasted at that time nearly the whole week. Each 
farmhouse had its little house party. Every cottager 
had his bit of beef and his feast plum-pudding. In 
the streets were booths and shows, where sweets and 
crackers were sold to the children, and pig-faced ladies 



328 TORY MEMORIES. 

and other invaluable properties were exhibited to their 
local elders. Fights pre-arranged between the local 
champion and the leading bruiser of any neighbour- 
ing village were usually brought off at the feast, afford- 
ing a touch of nature, and a stimulating change after 
a surfeit of beef, pudding and unnatural curiosities. 

Such, no doubt, had been the village feast from 
time immemorial, and the people enjoyed it with as 
much zest as they would have done in George II. 's 
reign. Taking the village communities as a whole, there 
had, I suspect, been little change in them during 
the intervening century, except in one particular. 
Sixty years ago the farmers had ceased to take their 
meals with the labourers, and very few of these, except 
shepherds and waggoners, lodged under their employers' 
roof. The men still wore their smock frocks, and some- 
times came to church in them ; but there was one old 
man who always came in a long, single-breasted frock 
coat of antique cut, made of coarse blue cloth. He was 
past seventy, and this was the coat he was married in. 

Our parsonage had a good reputation among female 
servants. It was considered a marrying situation, 
and sixty years ago five village matrons who had been 
either cook or housemaid at the vicarage were all 
living in Kilby, within a few doors of each other 
These were the privileged females with whom the clergy- 
man's boys and girls always went to tea at the feast — 
not that tea had anything to do with it, feast plum- 
pudding — that incomparable luxury — and cowslip wine 
being the viands provided on such occasions. One of 
these matrons, however, once famous for her damson 
cheese, used to place " sloan wine " upon the board, 
which she declared was " quite as good as any port." 



OUR VILLAGE. 329 

There were a few outsiders, like the blacksmith, who 
were permitted to share in the honour of entertaining 
us ; but it was a very exclusive set, and those admitted 
to it had to bear all the odium which attached! to 
" favouritism " in every walk of life. 

At Christmas the farmers showed their respect for 
the Church chiefly through the medium of pork-pies, 
of which the vicarage larder was always full at this 
agreeable season ; coming fresh from the farmers' 
ovens they were bad to beat. They neither are nor 
were to be bought. The best that you can obtain from 
the best shop in London, which is supplied from the 
country, are but coarse imitations of the genuine article 
made at home and for home consumption. Old Mr. 
Dryman sent a couple of the finest and fattest barn- 
door fowls which any epicure might wish to taste. They 
always came with his respectful duty to Madam 
Kebbel : such was the formula which prevailed in 
Dryman's boyhood. 

Christmas was a great time in the country villages 
of that date. The village church was always full on 
Christmas Day, and well decorated with holly and other 
suitable evergreens. There was no organ in our church 
at that time, and the village band occupied the front 
seats of a gallery at one end of it, with the school 
children and cottagers behind them. There was a 
fiddle and a bass fiddle, a clarionet and a bassoon, a 
flute and a trombone, and I verily believe a bugle. 
There were no hymn-books then, and the psalm to be 
sung was duly given out by the parish clerk. The bass 
voices usually remained sitting while the girls of the 
choir sang the higher parts ; but when it did come to 
the men's turn there was a rush and a roar like twenty 



330 TORY MEMORIES. 

pheasants springing from the ground at once. Up 
rose three or four stalwart performers and thundered 
out their allotted part with all the power of their lungs, 
much to the satisfaction of the congregation, who no 
doubt would have agreed with Mr. Ashcot that they 
were bound to this performance in return for the sup- 
port which they received, as otherwise they would be 
" eating their heads off." The louder they sang the 
more they showed their sense of duty. 

We had afternoon instead of evening church in those 
days, and as it was over by 4.30, there was time for 
the band to make their round of the farmhouses in the 
evening of Christmas Day, winding up with the par- 
sonage, where they usually arrived about eight. They 
assembled in the kitchen, and we all left the dining- 
room to receive them. They wouldn't have liked it 
had that compliment been omitted. Their united voices, 
combined with all kinds of music, were rather over- 
powering in that small apartment ; but we always 
stayed out the " Herald Angels " and " While shepherds 
watched their flocks by night," which was " Madam's " 
favourite. After that we returned to our dessert, and 
the singers sang what they liked for the benefit of the 
servants ; then with the five shillings which was the 
regular donation they took their departure. 

The parish clerk was perhaps one of the most in- 
teresting figures who survived in our village to tell 
a weak-kneed generation, who were taking to trousers, 
what had been the official costume of their grandfathers. 
He was a shoemaker by trade, and that this may have 
added strength to his convictions that it behoved him 
to wear top-boots, is possible ; but I am sure he was 
animated by higher motives as well, and that he felt 



OUR VILLAGE. 331 

every Sunday, when he donned his tops, that he was 
honouring a great tradition, and that, somehow or other, 
in his mind top-boots and the Establishment, top- 
boots and Church and State, top-boots and Church and 
King were mysteriously connected together ; and, in- 
deed, from one point of view, we might almost say that 
he was right. He was as loyal and devout as Joshua 
Rann in " Adam Bede," and once when the Dissenters 
asked him to tea, his indignation found vent in the ex- 
clamation that " they might just as well have asked 
Mr. Kebbel !" 

But although the clerk held aloof from the Dis- 
senters, the parson was not so nice, and would probably 
have accepted the invitation, not thinking it necessary 
to allow religious differences to interfere with his enjoy- 
ment of hot buttered toast, tea-cakes, and muffins. He 
regarded all his parishioners as equally under his pas- 
toral care, and the Dissenters never gave him any 
trouble. Indeed, the " Bishop," who held high office 
in his own sect, was ready to allow that the vicar was 
nearly his equal in clerical dignity. He was the lead- 
ing Dissenter in the parish, dubbed the " Bishop " by 
the peasantry, who possessed considerable native 
humour. He could drink a vast quantity of liquor, 
and was accustomed to say that " he didn't set no 
store by works." 

He lived in the centre of the village, which consisted 
of one long and nearly straight street, commanded by 
the " turnpike," to which I have already referred, with 
small yards or other secluded recesses nestling in the 
background, on either side. One of these was called 
" the jetty " — why, I could never make out. It was 
a cluster of small cottages, intersected by one or two 



332 TORY MEMORIES. 

narrow passages which you might have lived in the 
village a long time without discovering. It v/as situated 
at the top of the town, and the backs of the cottages 
looked out upon the fields ; but it was not the fashion- 
able quarter, though gentleman Jarvis hved there, 
who for some reason or other was supposed to know 
something of high life, a tradition which he strove to 
encourage by making his wife fetch the beer, and refus- 
ing to mingle with the herd. But he was on easy terms 
with old widow Mullet, who was the owner of her little 
cottage and garden with the three apple trees in front, 
and " lived upright." Perhaps he saw in her something 
of the housekeeper type. Her life would have been 
peaceful and happy had it not been for the village 
idiot — for, of course, we boasted one — who haunted that 
end of the town, dressed in a red coat, waving a big 
whip, and indulging in loud haUoos mingled with 
execrations, as though he were hunting a pack of 
hounds and cursing the foot-people. Nobody ever 
interfered with him ; but he frightened the poor old 
lady, who gave it as her opinion that folks who were 
" in that way " should be put in the stocks ; for that 
useful engine of restraint still existed in the village, 
and was very properly placed next door to the " Hawk 
and Hound," handy for the constable if folk inside 
became quarrelsome. 

The constable in my time was a reading man, who 
" couldn't abide noevels," and his thirst for knowledge 
was such that, greatly to the annoyance of his wife, he 
would insist on using two candles in pursuit of it. With 
this intellectual superiority, of which he frequently 
boasted, he combined equal eminence as a workman, 
and could hedge and ditch, sink a drain — or " suff," 



OUR VILLAGE. 333 

as it was called in those parts — mow, reap, or thresh 
with any man in the parish ; but he occasionally for- 
got that the human head was not so hard as the barn 
floor, and in the discharge of his official duties, having 
bestowed what he called " just a catch " on some gentle- 
man's crown rather harder than circumstances war- 
ranted, he was compelled to lay down his staff. 

Ours was not a quarrelsome village, but we had our 
roughs among the men, and our termagants among the 
women. 

Two such I saw what time the labouring ox 
With loosened traces from the furrow came. 

It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when my 
sister was going her rounds, and Nelly Goreham stood 
screaming across the street to Sukey Stinger, on whom 
she was bestowing a few return compliments in exchange 
for some just received from Sukey, whose invective 
was powerful. My sister remonstrated with Nelly, 
who wasn't a bad-natured woman, but not one to be 
crowed over by a rival. " Was yer to stand there all 
day," she said, " to have your eyes tored out ? " On 
another occasion my sister called on her, without any 
reference to the above little episode, and gave her 
some good advice. " Yes, miss," she said ; " what 
you say is aU very true and very good, and I like to 
hear you talk and read ; but we poor folks — we've got 
to scrat a living together : we must chance it." 

Peasants are usually credulous and superstitious ; 
and I remember once, when it was prophesied that the 
world was to come to an end at a given date, on the 
Saturday night before the appointed week a labourer 
who went for his wages told the farmer that he should 
not come to work on the Monday, as the end was coming. 



334 TORY MEMORIES. 

but that, "if all went straight," he'd come again the 
week after. 

One curious habit, evidently handed down from a 
very remote antiquity, survived among the Midland 
peasantry, and probably in most parts of England. I 
mean the practice of reckoning time by their meal- 
times. Thus, if something was to be done or was going 
to happen between twelve and one o'clock, they'd say 
it was " agen dinner time." Similarly, eight o'clock 
in the morning would be " agen breakfast time." They 
seldom or never mentioned the hour by the clock. I 
was often struck by this, because we find the same 
thing in Homer. When the Greeks break the Trojan 
line of battle, it is about the time when the woodcutter 
goes to his dinner. 

I fancy that both stocks and constables, and pos- 
sibly, though less likely, idiots as well, have disappeared 
from the town street in most midland villages. I should 
doubt, also, whether " Gentleman Jarvis," whose ac- 
quaintance with the aristocracy was indicated in so 
singular a manner, has left any successors behind him. 
Prefixes derived from agricultural or other occupations 
are, I suppose, still in use. We had Shepherd Crook- 
man and Carrier Crookman, Farmer Bright and Car- 
penter Bright, Butcher Steel and Baker Steel, Tailor 
Shears and Gardener Shears — the latter employed at 
Wistow, where there were extensive gardens. 

In those days machinery was comparatively un- 
known. The grass was cut by mowers, sometimes 
three or four in a row swinging their scythes in numerum^ 
as the Cyclops did their hammers, and was made into 
hay with the rake and the pitchfork busily pUed by 
the girls and matrons of the village, who looked for- 



OUR VILLAGE. 335 

ward to haymaking as a holiday. The wheat was cut 
with the sickle, and the big stacks were gradually threshed 
out with the flail during the winter months, the litter 
affording an abundant supply of food to the small birds. 
It is not given to us very often nowadays to hear the 
mower whet his scythe, or to listen to the cheerful thud 
of the flail on the oaken floor of the barn. Each farmer 
then gave the harvest-home supper to his own labourers 
in his own kitchen, and the vicar, being a bit of a farmer 
himself, did the same thing, though he did not make 
one of the company. Sometimes others were invited 
besides those whom he employed ; and a certain drunken 
old soldier who had been with Sir John Moore at Corunna 
was always in great request, not only on account of his 
public services, but also for the camp stories which he 
had to tell, and the good songs he could sing. 

Sixty years ago the peasantry and stockingers did 
not find village life duU, nor were they badly off. 
Cottages in the Midland counties did not have the 
gardens attached to them which one sees in eastern and 
southern counties. But allotment, as we have seen, had 
been introduced, and the vicar had devoted twelve 
acres of his glebe to this purpose. The people were 
delighted with these new field gardens. The produce 
fed the pig, leaving something for themselves, and the 
pig paid the rent. There was more life in the villages 
than there is now ; the people did not know that they 
were ignorant, and were not ashamed. Since that 
day they have eaten of the tree of knowledge, and their 
old simple lives and simple pleasures no longer satisfy 
them. But such a village as ours was in the middle 
of the last century contained, upon the whole, a fairly 
happy and contented population. Early in the year 



336 TORY MEMORIES. 

Plough Monday brought its annual revel, when the cow- 
horns were blown and the mummers capered on the 
parson's lawn. At Whitsuntide the village club held 
their annual function, walking solemnly to church in 
the morning with staves and banners, and dining at the 
" Hawk and Hound " afterwards, with the parson at 
the head of the table. Summer brought the Feast, 
when the band played up and down the street nearly all 
day, and got so much beer from the farmers that to- 
wards evening their harmony grew rather irregular, and 
if you made any inquiry you would be told, perhaps, that 
the trombone was " merry " or that the big drum was 
" fresh." Harvest and harvest home followed ; and 
when that was over it only wanted two months to 
Christmas. 

This was an exciting season for the village dames, 
who were all members of the Clothing Club, and at 
Christmas they came up to the parsonage to choose 
their clothes. Their subscriptions ranged from a penny 
a week up to sixpence, and at the end of the year there 
was a bonus provided in proportion. The pence were 
collected by the clergyman's wife, and at Christmas 
the women all came to invest their Uttle savings in 
petticoats, gowns, blankets, or other such articles of 
female attire or domestic use as they stood most in 
need of. It was an amusing sight, if a feeling somewhat 
deeper than amusement did not gradually creep in, 
as you watched the poor things tortured with anxiety 
how to lay out their httle hoard to the best advantage, 
and distracted between the rival attractions of prints, 
stuffs, cahcoes, flannels, linsey, wolsey, and other 
materials which, as Serjeant Buzfuz says, " I am not 
in a position to explain." They had to consider their 



OUR VILLAGE. 337 

husband's tastes as well as their owiij and sometimes 
these were as difficult to please as a dandy of the 
Regency. I heard of one poor woman who bought a 
piece of violet-coloured stuff to make a frock for her 
little girl. Her husband made her take it back because 
it " warn't violet, but downright ploom." It is im- 
possible to spell the word so as to give it the exact Mid- 
land counties pronunciation. They were very particular 
about their mourning, as I believe the poor are gener- 
ally, and would sometimes anticipate the sad occasion. 
Fancy Nan's mother, for instance, whose daughter 
was supposed to be consumptive, desired the draper's 
man to " take away them colours. I don't want no 
colours," she said, " with my poor daughter like to die. 
Bring me a murning print." Fancy Nan, so named by 
the village gallants, was a really pretty, graceful girl, 
who lived for many years after the " murning print " 
was bought. 

In the early 'forties the new Poor Law was still 
highly unpopular with the labourers. The memory of 
what they enjoyed under the old one was still fresh ; 
and, no doubt, the change did deprive the poor of many 
perquisites to which they had long been accustomed, 
and which they had come to look on as their rights. 
Into the thorny question of indoor and outdoor relief 
I am not about to plunge ; but I really don't think that 
at the period referred to the poor in our own village, 
whether peasants or artisans, had much to complain 
of beyond the abolition of a system which, however 
immediately comfortable, was undoubtedly demoralis- 
ing, and, from an economic point of view, ruinous. 
Persons well read in the history of the Poor Law will 
know there was a time when the working man in general, 
w 



338 TORY MEMORIES. 

to whatever order, he belonged^ had a horror of " coming 
on the parish." The well-meant, but perhaps not alto- 
gether wise legislation which was adopted during the 
distress occasioned by the French War, tended to impair 
this wholesome feeling, and by 1834 i^ had almost 
vanished.* 

Between'Jthe end of the reign of George IL and the 
close of the American War, a great change had taken 
place in the condition of the English peasantry. The 
enclosure of wastes and commons had deprived them 
of many advantages which went to eke out their wages, 
and prices having risen at the same time, the pinch of 
poverty began to be more severely felt than ever it had 
been during the whole of the eighteenth century. Mr. 
Pitt proposed that industrial schools should be estab- 
lished in all the villages of the kingdom, and that the 
parish officers should be empowered to levy the neces- 
sary rates ; and, what is more to the present purpose, 
that any person entitled to receive parish relief might 
take a lump sum in advance to enable him or her to buy 
a cow or a pig or pay the rent of a small plot of ground. 
Mr. Pitt wished to place parish relief on such a footing 
that the poor should not be ashamed of receiving it. 
He thought they had a right to it, and that there was 
nothing humihating in the acceptance of it. 

The pressure of foreign affairs prevented Mr. Pitt 
from carr5nng out this scheme. But an Act was passed 
in 1796 which became the parent of all the abuses of 
which the old system was prolific. Under this Act 
relief might be given in aid of wages to able-bodied 
men, and the parish authorities were at liberty to give 
clothes and shoes if they liked. The farmers seem for 

* The next two pages are in part adapted from my " Agricultural Labourer." 



OUR VILLAGE. 339 

a long time to have found this cheaper than paying 
higher wages ; but the system became intolerable at 
last, and then reformers rushed into the opposite 
extreme and destroyed the old parochial system alto- 
gether. It would have been quite enough to repeal 
the Act of 1796, which, besides its practical anomalies, 
did certainly tend to undermine the self-respect of the 
peasantry ; but the wholesale destruction of a system 
which had lasted for three hundred years, threatening, 
as it did, the entire withdrawal of outdoor reUef, inspired 
the bitterest hatred among the agricultural poor ; and 
I remember that ten years after the Act of 1834 was 
passed the new Union workhouses were never spoken 
of by the labourers but with expressions of the strongest 
indignation. They were called " bastyles," a term which 
I hardly understood then, but which conveyed to my 
childish mind an impression of cruel hardships and 
privations endured by an unoffending class among 
whom I counted many friends. I can just recollect 
one of the old parish workhouses, then in ruins, which 
stood by the side of the road about two miles from our 
house. It was a small building with some garden 
ground attached to it, and could not have been capable 
of accommodating many inmates. 

Statesmen hke Mr. Pitt and Mr. Canning could take 
broader views of these questions than are taken by the 
professors of a rigid political economy. Mr. Canning, 
for instance, used to say that the old system was not 
one to be abolished with a light heart, and he attri- 
buted the general loyalty of the people during many 
trying periods to the existence of the old Poor Law, 
which gave them a hold upon the land, and attached 
them to the gentry. The Act of 1834, there is good 



340 TORY MEMORIES. 

reason to believe, went beyond the necessities of the 
case. When outdoor relief was granted on a magis- 
trate's order, it created a close and intimate connection 
between the landed proprietors and the poor, such as 
had existed for centuries. But one good effect the 
new system undoubtedly had. It revived the old 
aversion to parish relief which the Act of 1796 had 
gradually worn away. On the other hand, it made a 
change in the relations between the peasantry, the 
clergy, and the gentry, which, though only a necessary 
part of the much wider change in our whole parochial 
system effected by Earl Grey's Act, was not an un- 
mixed good. But at the time of which I am writing, 
there was little evidence on the surface of any such 
change of feeling. Village life in the Midlands down 
to sixty years ago, and later, was much what it was 
sixty years before that as described by Cobbett and 
sixty years before Cobbett as described by Lord Stan- 
hope. In the second half of the nineteenth century 
the change began ; but it proceeded very slowly till 
the agricultural depression of 1875 set in and an agri- 
cultural agitation commenced which put an end for 
ever to the rural England which I have known, and 
which the two above-named writers have described. 

Yet the change, after all, was only accentuated by 
that great calamity. It must have come ; and I often, 
in thinking of it, remember what Sir Walter Scott says 
in the concluding chapter of " Waverley " as to the 
change which had come over Scotland during the sixty 
years that passed between 1755 and 1805. That 
change, which he describes in detail, had, he says, 
" made the present people of Scotland a class of beings 
as different from their grandfathers as the existing 



OUR VILLAGE. 341 

English are from those of Queen Ehzabeth's time." It 
would be exaggeration to say as much as this of the 
change which has passed over the English village in 
the same period of time ; but something very like it 
may be said without exceeding the truth. As I am able 
to remember, if imperfectly, the old system as it was 
before any signs of dissolution had shown themselves, 
and as I believe it to have existed when Cobbett fol- 
lowed the plough and Gray v^rote the " Elegy," I have 
taken a pleasure in recording these few reminiscences 
of rural scenes and habits of which, in a few years, 
there will be no surviving witnesses. 

I try to hope that the present is only a transition 
period in the history of English village life, and that a 
future may be in store for it which will bring back the 
peasantry to their old homes. 

But it will not bring back the village hfe of my 
childhood which I have here feebly endeavoured to 
describe, with its simple pleasures, its picturesque in- 
dustries, and its original humours. These are gone ; 
the scythe and the flail, the stocking frame, the trom- 
bone and the bassoon are silenced. But many memo- 
ries linger round them, and these it has been a pleasure 
to recall. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

RETROSPECT. 

Childhood and Old Age — Effect of the Reform Act of 1832 on the Tory 
Party — Of the Oxford Revival — Of the Young England Movement — • 
Protection — -The Present Economic Reaction — The Future — Present 
Position of the Church of England — Decline of the House of 
Commons — A Last Word. 

In looking back over the period which these reminis- 
cences embrace, I am sometimes reminded of what 
has been said concerning a future state — namely, that 
perhaps our life in this world may then present itself 
to our minds with only the same degree of remoteness 
and unreality as our childhood presents to our old age. 
It is difficult to realise the life we led as children, and 
still more to recall the thoughts, hopes, and fears of 
fifty years ago. If we look into the far past we can 
discern little figures which we know to be ourselves 
moving about on ground familiar to us ; but what we 
were doing then, what we enjoyed, in what we were 
vexed, what we looked forward to, we can only very 
imperfectly comprehend. Of course, certain events will 
have taken place in the childhood of most men which 
stand out so far above the rest that they can never be 
forgotten, nor can the lapse of years either blunt or 
obliterate the impressions which they first produced on 
us. But these are few and far between. I am speak- 
ing of the ordinary daily life of which the even tenor 

342 



RETROSPECT. 343 

boasts no such landmarks, and which we look back 
upon across the intervening years much as we discern 
the dim outline of some distant shore across an arm of 
the sea. 

It may be that this life will present itself to us 
in another world under very similar conditions. I be- 
lieve the thought is to be found in Butler's " Analogy," 
and it suggests, as I have said, a parallel comparison 
between two periods of political and intellectual 
activity widely distant from each other. We can- 
not even for a moment throw ourselves back into our 
former selves ; or realise, except in the minutest degree, 
what it is to be a child. These reminiscences extend, 
roughly speaking, over sixty years ; and if I look a 
little further back and include what I heard from 
others of the period immediately preceding it, I find 
myself looking through a kind of haze, and have great 
difficulty in realising to myself how men thought and 
felt before the nation was roused from the moral repose 
which it had enjoyed for near a century and a half. 
That repose had not been materially disturbed even 
by the French Revolution. It was dispelled, never to 
return, by the storms which followed the death of Mr. 
Canning. 

Before quitting the tangled skein of memories with 
which we have hitherto been engaged, a few final 
words may not be out of place tracing the separate 
effects upon Tor3dsm of the several great movements, 
political, religious, social, and literary, by which the 
nineteenth century has been distinguished. Before the 
French Revolution, Toryism was not regarded as a 
purely defensive organisation. Before 1793 the institu- 
tions of the country were not threatened. The Whigs 



344 TORY MEMORIES. 

were just as good Conservatives as the Tories, and they 
had reason to be. When they quitted this position, and, 
following the lead of Mr. Fox, joined hands with the 
Jacobins, the Tories were compelled to change their 
ground, too. As the Whigs became destructives, the 
Tories became Conservatives. The thing was inevit- 
able : they came to regard the whole fabric of the 
Constitution and the security of the existing social order 
as specially entrusted to themselves. The Revolution 
of 1828-32 did not destroy their raison d'etre, for there 
was plenty left to defend ; but it unhinged and de- 
moralised the party. The mortification of defeat, the 
consciousness that they had proved unequal to the task 
of defending the position which they had fondly 
believed to be impregnable, paralysed their energies ; 
and when they were shown a way by which they might 
not only recover their lost prestige, but regain a posi- 
tion far stronger and more popular than the one they 
had lost, they had not the heart to follow it. Such 
was the effect of the Reform Bill on the Toryism of 
that era. 

What, then, was the effect of the great religious 
movement which was taking place simultaneously ? 
Just the reverse of what it ought to have been. In- 
stead of acting as a concentrating and consolidating 
force, and giving the Tory party another great cause 
to fight for, the cause which had once been their own, 
" that ancient religion," as Newman called it, which 
had not yet entirely died out : instead of this, the 
Oxford Revival had exactly the opposite effect. It 
operated as a disintegrating force, and has continued 
to be an element of weakness in the Tory party from 
that day to this. This has not been sufficiently ob- 



RETROSPECT. 345 

served. Mr. Gladstone would have rallied the party 
under that banner ; but they would not. He declared 
that he himself^ soon after the publication of his " Church 
and State," " found himself the last man upon the 
sinking ship." This was not quite true. Mr. Glad- 
stone, like Newman, was impatient, and had he stuck 
to his first principles, he might still have been sur- 
cessful. As it was, there was a cry against Puseyism, 
and though the Tory party were only very partially 
imbued with what went by that name, it divided them 
into two sections suspicious of each other, and dis- 
abled them from acting together with that perfect 
unanimity which the situation demanded. Such was 
undoubtedly the effect of the Oxford Revival on the 
Tory party after 1832. 

Had the kindred movement, the Young England 
movement, any better success ? Here again the Tory 
party threw away a chance which in their better days 
they might eagerly have embraced, but which, in their 
then disheartened and sceptical frame of mind, was too 
heavy a task for them ; for be it remembered that the 
whole Revolution completed within the four years 
already named, 1828-32, and quite as important as 
the Revolution of 1688, had the effect which all revolu- 
tions have, and which Thucydides has so forcibly 
described. They breed a spirit of scepticism, distrust, 
and indifference to great principles. The Tory party 
had lost the firm footing which the old Constitution 
gave them ; and when a new field of action was set 
before them they had lost faith in themselves, and re- 
coiled from the necessary effort. "It is clear from 
' Sybil,' " says Mr. Froude, " that there had been a 
time when he (Lord Beaconsfield) could have taken up 



346 TORY MEMORIES. 

as a statesman with all his heart the cause of labour, 
and if the younger generation to whom he appealed 
would have gone with him, he might have led a nobler 
crusade than Coeur de Lion." But they would not. 
The two greatest statesmen of the party appealed to 
them in vain. The shock of the Revolution had been 
too fresh to allow of their bracing up their energies 
again for so great an effort as was required of them. 
The principle of faith had been crushed in them, and 
though Mr. Disraeli's theories did not divide the party 
as the Tractarian movement did, the effect was to breed 
in them distrust of the only leader who was possible for 
them in the House of Commons, and to weaken their 
Parliamentary action on more than one well-known 
occasion. 

On the other hand, the Tory party has been deeply 
and permanently affected by the great literary move- 
ment which began with the Lake School, and which, 
though Liberal in its origin, found its truest representa- 
tive in the genius of Sir Walter Scott. In Scott and 
Carlyle Toryism has had the unspeakable privilege of 
having on its side the two writers who, it will be gener- 
ally allowed, have influenced the political thought of 
Great Britain more than any two that could be named 
alongside of them. Macaulay, it is said, declined to 
write an article on Scott because he had done so much 
harm that he could not write of him in a friendly spirit, 
and did not wish to attack him. The harm was the 
good. When we think of all that the " old Scotch 
Tory," as Scott called himself, has done for us, we need 
not wonder at Macaulay's aversion to him. 

As far as the greatness of any writer is to be measured 
by the effect which he produces on his own age, Scott^in 



RETROSPECT. 347 

modern times has had but one equal, if indeed he has 
had that — namely, Carlyle. The influence of the 
Waverley novels operated in two different directions. 
It contributed powerfully to the growth of that younger 
Toryism from whose loins sprang the powerful and 
popular Conservative party of the present day,, and 
it prepared the soil for the reception of that Anglo- 
Catholic revival which, with all its errors, has been 
the salvation of the English Church. When we 
consider the magnitude of the issues at stake, the in- 
terests, both temporal and spiritual, in defence of which 
these two forces are combined ; when we think of the 
influence to be exercised on future generations by the 
victory, or the defeat, of either in the struggle which is 
imminent ; when we think of all that Scott may have been 
instrumental in saving for us, and, if the evil days must 
come at last, the long respite he has gained for us ; 
when we look back on the sixty years' war, and note 
the var5dng fortunes of the fight, the advance, the 
retreat, the surging assault, the obstinate defence ; 
and reflect how much the cause of faith and loyalty and 
order has owed to the genius of Sir Walter Scott, those 
who still fight under this ancient banner may perhaps 
sympathise with one who can boast that from child- 
hood he has sat at Sir Walter Scott's feet.* 

At the unveiling of the bust of Sir Walter Scott 
by the Duke of Buccleuch in Westminster Abbey, of 
which I have spoken in an earlier chapter, a striking 
testimony to the admiration with which that great writer 
was regarded in America was afforded by Mr. Hay, 
the American Ambassador. The American mind, he 
said, was peculiarly sensitive to the romance of courts 

* See Quarterly Review, April, 1895. 



348 TORY MEMORIES. 

and princes ; and in the Far West, in the forests and 
the prairies, the Waverleys were as warmly appreciated 
as in Washington and Boston. His father, he added, 
had often told him he remembered when young men 
would ride thirty or forty miles to the nearest town to 
know when the next Waverley would be published. 

On the same occasion an interesting speech was 
made by Mr. A. J. Balfour, calKng special attention to 
Scott's influence and popularity on the Continent, to 
which the only two English writers who could be said 
to make any approach were Richardson and Byron. 
To what was this due ? In large part to the fact that 
Scott's great merit did not lie in style or niceties of 
style, which many men do not always understand. 
He relied on " broad effects and serious issues," which 
all could appreciate. Scott had the benefit of one 
great secret of success to which most great men have 
been indebted, " the coincidence of special and ex- 
ceptional gifts with special and exceptional opportu- 
nities." The reaction against the eighteenth century 
was, said Mr. Balfour, Scott's opportunity, and he was 
ready for it when it came. He took it at the flood. 
The reaction was towards romance, the romance of 
the past, of feudalism, chivalry, and Catholicism, and 
Scott reclothed the dry bones and made them 
living realities, and his characters living representatives 
of them. 

In Scott's Journal of July 13th, 1827, we read, " Two 
agreeable persons, the Revd. Mr. Gilly, one of the Preben- 
daries of Durham, with his wife, a pretty little woman, 
dined with us." I met the " pretty little woman," at 
Measden in Hertfordshire, where she was staying with our 
friends, Mr. and Mrs. Rudge, Mr. Rudge being rector of 



RETROSPECT. 349 

the parish — the same house at which I was staying when 
invited to shoot with Lord Strathnairn. Mrs. Gilly 
was then a charming old lady between sixty and seventy 
years of age. She had married Dr. Gilly, who was 
much older than herself, at the age of seventeen, and 
she used to tell us of Sir Walter Scott's surprise when 
she and her husband drove to Abbotsford, and Scott, 
as was his wont, came up the gravel walk to meet them. 
" ^Vhy, she's quite a young thing ! " he exclaimed. 
She described him as very lame, and apparently a short 
man, which he certainly was not, but he was much 
bent at that time and would look so, no doubt, as he 
hobbled up with his stick to the door of the carriage. 
She was, of course, delighted with him, but hardly 
more than we were at hearing her talk of him. 

I remember well, too, my own first introduction to 
the Waverleys, and how as children we used to discuss 
them with our playfellows, the young Halfords. What 
desperate young Tories and Jacobites we all were ! 
How we stood by Claverhouse and Rob Roy, and 
Peveril of the Peak, and Fergus M'lvor, and Red- 
gauntlet and Ravenswood, and Queen Mary ! We 
were too young, I think, to appreciate the exquisite 
humour of such characters as the Antiquary, Brad- 
wardine, and Nicol Jarvie. And neither the first nor 
the last of these three was a Tory. The heroic was 
what appealed to us, as it does to all young minds. 
And I have little doubt that from reading the Waver- 
leys continually, as I did between the ages of ten and 
twelve, my mind received a bias which determined my 
future principles. In Mrs. Gilly I found one who had 
actually come in contact with the magician, and to 
touch the hand which had once touched his seemed to 



350 TORY MEMORIES. 

me, even at the sober age of forty-five, to be a great 
privilege. 

Opinions may differ about the hterary merits of the 
Waverleys. Of their political influence there can hardly 
be two opinions. As much may be said of Carlyle's 
writings. The poetry of Toryism in Scott, and the 
strength of Toryism in Carlyle, have, the two together, 
shown how powerfully that creed appeals to both the 
imagination and the reason, without the aid of which no 
political system can ever be either permanent or popular. 

Such has been the effect of the literary movement 
of the last century. I am now, however, approaching 
delicate ground, and the probable influence on the Tory 
party of the economic reaction to which the twentieth 
century has given birth I shall not venture to discuss. It 
may be disastrous. It may, on the contrary, tend to the 
re-connection of broken ties, the rupture of which is the 
worst misfortune which has ever befallen Toryism. 
My own idea is that the Tory party now should give 
their adversaries rope enough. If we try to compete 
with them in what is called a constructive policy, they 
can always go one better, for they don't care how far 
they go, and Tories do. Let the Tories be true to their 
great trust, true to their great chief, and exorcise 
that evil spirit which makes a party turn upon its leaders 
as soon as fortune goes against it — a fault, I am sorry 
to say, which has been only too conspicuous in the 
history of the Tory party — and their turn will come 
round again, sooner, perhaps, than they think for. If 
they choose " to throw a pearl away richer than all 
their tribe," they will wander many years in the wilder- 
ness before they have atoned for their error. 

Such memories as I have recorded relating to the 



RETROSPECT. 351 

Church of England naturally suggest the question 
whether the changes we have noticed have left her 
stronger or weaker than she was before. What she 
may have lost in one way she has gained in another ; 
but to balance the loss and the gain would lead me too 
far afield, and would be tantamount to a set essay on 
the Church. I have no doubt that over large masses 
of the population she has greatly strengthened her hold. 
The real energy and self-devotion which distinguish the 
clergy at the present day are probably more fully ap- 
preciated in the towns than in the country, while the 
bonhomie, the rural tastes and the social sympathies 
displayed in such an eminent degree by an older genera- 
tion of rectors and vicars are, perhaps, not equally 
visible in their successors, who may possibly have lost 
ground in the rural districts, where these qualities are 
specially valued. I do not say that they have, but 
if they have, the rural loss is less, I should think, than 
the urban gain. Moreover, the high ceremonial, the 
music, and all that makes for beauty in the Anglican 
service appeal to a class of minds more likely to be met 
with among the artisans than among the peasantry, 
with whom at first these changes were far from popular. 
On the whole, though I cannot offer any decided 
opinion either one way or the other, I should 
say that the Church as an institution is neither 
weaker nor stronger than it was at the accession of 
Queen Victoria; but that her character in the esti- 
mation of the more educated and intelligent classes 
has appreciably risen. I have always been of opinion, 
and am still, that one great source ^ of strength 
peculiar to the Church of England is the social posi- 
tion of the clergy. They are, as a rule, gentlemen ; 



352 TORY MEMORIES. 

and let certain persons say what they will, the working 
classes like gentlemen, and like to be addressed by 
them. If ever anything should occur to deprive the 
Church of the special advantage which she thus en- 
joys, or greatly to diminish its extent, the truth of 
what I say would, I think, very speedily be recognised. 

Let me not be misunderstood, I am speaking of the 
Church of England as she is : a great national insti- 
tution representing a great deal more than the body of 
doctrine handed down to her from the Apostolic 
ages. She is part of a great social system, a great 
constitutional organisation, as well. And, regarding her 
all round from both these points of view, what I assert 
of her is true. It would not be true of religious insti- 
tutions concerned with religion alone. Their strength 
is derived from a different source, and may in some 
circumstances, as Dr. Johnson himself admitted, be more 
effective than that of the Established Church. Mr. 
Disraeli's speeches at Aylesbury (November 14, 1861) 
and at High Wycombe in October, 1862, are a masterly 
exposition of the theory thus briefly indicated. 

To pass from the Church to the State : the differ- 
ence between the House of Commons as it is now and 
as it was sixty years ago is too generally recognised to 
require much notice from myself. That the House has 
risen in national estimation since the legislation of 
1832 scarcely anyone pretends to say who has any 
knowledge of the subject. Mr. Gladstone himself was 
one of the first to recognise its decline. The same 
prestige no longer attaches to the position of a member, 
which is at once more irksome and less dignified than 
it used to be, the natural consequence being that the 
same class of men no longer care so much for a seat in 



RETROSPECT. 353 

it. The gravity of this change may not be apparent 
to the Labour Party and the Socialists, who hope to 
find their account in it ; but to all thinking men who 
have no object of their own to gain by the deteriora- 
tion of Parliament, it has long been a source of great 
anxiety. 

These " Memories " have been my companions now 
for nearly twelve months, and if anyone in reading 
them experiences a tenth part of the pleasure that I 
have taken in recording them I shall hold myself ex- 
tremely fortunate. Mr. Disraeli has said in one of his 
novels that there is nothing so sad to look back upon 
as a youth that has not been enjoyed. I cannot say 
that of my own youth ; and in a great part of these 
reminiscences I have been enjojdng it over again. But 
what is endeared to one's self by a thousand associations 
cannot awaken the same feelings in others, and the 
record must depend for its popularity solely on the 
degree of interest or amusement which the subject 
matter is of itself calculated to afford. I have not 
taken Toryism too seriously. I have tried to avoid as 
much as possible controversial questions and party 
politics ; but I did not feel called upon to exclude 
them altogether, or to refrain from the expression of 
my own opinions where it seemed natural to intro- 
duce them. 

I have written as a Tory, and spoken freely of such 
as are hostile to the political faith in which I was brought 
up ; but in alluding to party tactics and parliamentary 
manoeuvres I have always meant to make it plain that 
I regarded them as the legitimate instruments of party 
warfare, and that at all events I did not consider these 
x 



354 TORY MEMORIES. 

pages suitable for the discussion of political morality. 
Where I have condemned measures^ I have not, that 
I am aware of, traduced motives, or suggested that 
every attack upon principles which I hold to be sacred 
must necessarily be dishonest. 

On closing the series, and looking back across the 
long years through which it has travelled, I trust I 
am not mistaken in believing that I have said nothing 
which can be thought injurious either to the feelings 
of the living or the memory of the dead. Of the various 
scenes and incidents herein depicted, I have always 
endeavoured to make the humorous aspect the pre- 
dominant feature ; and if in the long train of anecdotes, 
jocose, sarcastic, or grotesque, which necessarily occu- 
pies a large portion of the book, I have left an5rthing 
of a nature to annoy or to misrepresent a single indi- 
vidual, either public or private, I hope, whoever he 
may be, that he will accept the apology thus tendered 
beforehand for what, if inconsiderate, was certainly 
unintentional. Toryism, like Liberalism, is only one 
form of giving expression to a sentiment which affects 
all our views of life and human nature in general, as 
well as of poUtics in particular; and many things 
appeal to itthat are not necessarily connected with 
the creed which bears its name. 



INDEX. 



A. 

" Adullamites, The," 121 — 131 
"Agricultural Labourer, The," by 

T. E. Kebbel, 2S9 note 
Agriculturists, Tory, 288 — 298 
Allotment system, 288 — 296 
Arcadia, Tory, 149 — 170 
Aristocracy, and the power of the 

Crown, 43 
Aristotle, 53 

Artisan class. The, 257, 258 
Austin, Mr. Alfred, Poet-Laureate, 

i39j 231 
Austen, Jane, 323 



B. 



Baden-Powell, Sir George, iiS, 119 

Baker, Johnny, 191 

Balfour, Right Hon. A. J., loi, 120, 

147, 242, 348, 350 
Balfour of Burleigh, Lord, i, 97, 

120, 212 
Beaconsfield, Lord {see Disraeli, 

Benjamin) 
Beau champ. Lord (Mr. Lygon), 31, 

37, 92 
Berlin Congress, 55 
Black Sea Conference, The, 1871, 

46 
Blackwood, Mr. William, 253 
Blackwood's Magazine, 248 
Bohemia, Tory, 171 — 192 
Bolingbroke, Lord, g, 11, 36 
Brabourne, Lord, 100 
Bradlaugh, Charles, 139 
Brandt, William, 201, 202, 203, 208 



Bright, John, 15, 122, 125 
Brocket of St. Dunstan's, 311 — 312 
Brodrick, Right Hon. W. St. John, 

96 
Brodrick, Mrs. St. John, 147 
Brough, Robert, 173 
Bucknill, Mr., 281 
Burghclere, Lady, 147 
Burke, Edmund, i5o 
Butler's "Analogy," 343 
Byron, Lord, as interpreter of the 

Lake School, 147 



C. 

Cambridge, Duke of (father of the 
Commander-in-Chief), 152 

Canada Corn Bill, 90 

Canning, George, 3, 122, 304, 339, 
343 

Canning Club, The, 210 

Caftain, The, Loss of, 48 

Carnarvon, Lord, 82 ; his character, 

85 
Carlyle, Thomas, Writings of, 350 
"Cave, The," 121 — 131 
Cecil Club, The, 212 
Chamberlain, Right Hon. Joseph, 

and small holdings, 89, 138 
Charles L, 151 
Charles, Sir Arthur, 203, 233 
Chiltern Hills, The, cradle of 

aristocratic conspiracy against 

Charles L, 35 
Christian, Prince, 138 
Church of England, The, 308, 351, 

352 



355 



356 



TORY MEMORIES. 



Churcli of England in Wales, 277 

Church and State, danger of dis- 
ruption, 28, 308 

Churchill, Lord Randolph, 97, 254 

Cicero quoted, 45 

Clubs, Tory, 193 — 215 

Cobbett, William, Disraeli's esti- 
mate of his style, 25, 286, 340 

Cobden, Richard, 122 

Colchester, Lord, 212 

Collins, Mortimer, 184 — 187 

Commons, House of. Deterioration 
of, 352 

Co-operative farming, 294 — 296 

Cook, Dutton, 204 

Cornhill Magazine, The, 197, 199 

Corry, Montagu {see Rowton, Lord) 

Cotton, Dr., Dean of Bangor, 161 

Coulton, David T., editor of the 
Press, 2, 59, 239 

Country clergymen, 166 

Country gentlemen, diminution of 
their prestige, 164 

County Government Bill of 1888, 
164 

Courthope, Mr., 241 

Crabbe, George, 69, 75 

Creighton, Bishop Mandell, 234 

Cross, Lord, 135 

Crown, Power of the, 43 

Curtis, Mr. G. B., 231, 237, 238 

Curzon, Lord (second Earl Howe), 
III, "3, 157 



D. 



Daily Telegra-ph, The, 139 
Danvers, George, 207, 208 
Day, The, 39, 129, 131 
Derby, Lord (the fourteenth Earl), 
his refusal to form a Ministry, 
13 ; his indiscretion in offending 
Roman Catholics, 29 ; anecdotes 
about, 43, 92 
Derby, Lord (the fifteenth Earl), 54 
Dickens, Charles, 24, 153, 313, 323 
Dimsdale, Baron, 104 — no 
Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Bea- 
consfield, as leader of the Con- 



servative Party, 2, 3 ; epigram 
on Lord Palmerston's Govern- 
ment, 4 ; on the Venetian 
Constitution, 8 ; his opinion of 
Bolingbroke, 9 ; his personal 
appearance, 16, 31, 36, 63; 
condemned by Conservatives 
for touching Reform, i6 ; on 
Whig failure at Reform, 17 ; 
his efforts to regain Gladstone, 
21 ; relations to his party in 
1859, 22 ; admires irony in 
literature, 24 ; writes a leading 
article in the Press, 25 ; re- 
lations with the Church of 
England, 27, 42, 51 ; contrasted 
with Gladstone, 32 ; sidelights 
on his character, 34 ; his views 
on the Civil War, 35 ; anecdotes 
of, 37, 40, 45 ; comes into office 
the third time, 38 ; views on 
Parliamentary Reform, 38 ; ad- 
miration for the Whigs, 42 ; 
specimens of his sarcastic style, 
47, 50 ; elevation to the House 
of Lords, 54 ; gradual loss of 
popularity after 1878, 56 ; natur- 
ally an aristocrat, 65 ; his 
opinion of Tory Democracy, 
254; "Coningsby," 5, 6, 44, 55, 
63, 74, 80 ; "Henrietta Temple," 
44; "Lothair," 52; "Sybil," 45, 
132, 306; "Vivian Grey," 5; 
miscellaneous references to, 2, 

32, 165, 210, 213 

Disraeli, Mrs. (Lady Beaconsfield), 

33, 45 

Dixon, Hepworth, 181 
Dixon, Miss Hepworth, 275 
Dunckley, Mr., on encroachments 

of the Crown, 53 
Dunkellin, Lord, his amendment to 

the Russell Reform Bill, 125 
Durell, D. V., 202, 203 

E. 

Edgar, J. G., 172, 176-7 
Edwards, Mr. Sutherland, 190 



INDEX. 



357 



Elcho, Lord, 124, 129 
Eliot, George, 297 
Ellicott, Bishop, 55 
Escott, Mr. T. H. S., 231, 244 
"Essays and Reviews," 51 



F. 

Fawcett, Henry, 208, 209 
Field Gardens, 289 
Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond, 250 
Fortnightly Review, 241, 244, 245, 

247 
Fraser's Magazine, 10 
Free Trade, 14, 91 
Froude, Hurrell, 307 
Froude, James Anthony, 10, 47, 56, 

165, i56, 167-8, 345 



Game Laws and Toryism, 284 

German Alliance in the 18th cen- 
tury, 1 1 

Gilly, Mrs., 349 

Gladstone, W. E., his opinion of 
the Press, 2 ; " the half-regained 
Eurydice," 14 ; his strategy after 
the Reform Bill of 1S67, 41 ; 
and the Church of England, 42 ; 
anecdotes of, 97, 122, 125, 145, 
345 

Glamis, Lord, 108 

Globe, The, 229 

Gorst, Sir John, 137 

Grant-DufF, Sir Mountstuart, loi 

Gra-phic, The, 229 

Greenwood, Mr. Frederick, 220, 221, 
222 — 23 

Greg, Mr. Percy, 230 

Grosvenor, Lord, his amendment to 
the Reform Bill of 1866, 126 

Gurdon, Mr. Brampton, his co- 
operative farm at Assington, 
29s 

"Guy Mannering," 252 



H. 

Halford, Sir Charles, 150 
Halford, Sir Henry (the physician), 

150, 151, 154, 15s 
Halford, Sir Henry (the second), 

157—159 
Halford, Sir Henry (the third), 159 — 

160 
Halford, Sir John, 160, 290 
Halford, Sir Richard, 151 
Hamilton, Sir William, 309 
Hannay, James, 174 — 184, 197, 251, 

270 
Harcourt, Sir William, 51 
Hartington, Lord, 17 
Hazehigge, Sir Arthur, 164 
Hemans, Mrs., quoted, 64 
Herbert, Lady Winifred (Lady 

Burghclere), 147 
Herbert of Lea, Lord, 15 
Hook, Theodore, 44 
Horace quoted, 77 
Household Words, 153 
Hughenden, Buckinghamshire, 30, 

64 
Hyndman, Mr. H. M., 134 



L 



Iddesleigh, Earl of {see Northcote, 

Sir Stafford) 
Idler, The, 173 
Irish University Education Bill of 

^^n, 49 



Jacobite memories, 141 
Jebb, Sir Richard, 1 19 
Jeune, Lady (Lady St. Helier), 97, 

134—142 
Journalism and literature, the 

author's connection with, i, 2, 

216 — 253 et -passim 
Jowett, Rev. Benjamin, 119 
Junior Carlton Club, 213 
"Junius," 25, 137, 251 



358 



TORY MEMORIES. 



K. 



Kebbel, Rev. H. (the author's 
father), 149, 151, 154, 156, 160 — 
162 

Keble, Rev. John, 307 

Kenyon-Slaney clause in the Edu- 
cation Bill of 1902, Sir Richard 
Jebb's indignation at, 119 

Knowles, Sir James, 146, 245, 246, 
251 



L. 



Labour Party, The, 353 

Lake, Dean, of Durham, 233 

Landed aristocracy. The, 291 — 293 

Leader, The, 187 

Leicestershire, among the first coun- 
ties to adopt allotment system, 
288 

Literature, Disraeli's taste in, 24, 32 

Literature and journalism. The 
author's connection with, i, 2, 
216 — 253 et -passim 

Liverpool, Lord, 155 

Lomer, 202, 203 

London Correspondent, Duties of a, 
227 

Low, Mr. Sidney, 252 

Lowe, Robert {see Sherbrooke, Lord) 

Lucas, Samuel, 236 

Lygon, Mr. (see Beauchamp, Lord) 

Lyndhurst, Lord, 23 

Lytton, Lord, quoted, 123 



M. 



Malmesbury, Lord, 18, 213 
Manners, Lord John {see Rutland, 

Duke of) 
Mansel, Dean, 309 
Marsham, Dr., 301 
Marten, Sir A. G. , 202 
Martin, Sir Theodore, 147 
Martin, Lady, 147 
Mitchell, Mr. (Fellow and Tutor of 

Lincoln), 302 
MontJily Review, The, 249 



Morley, Mr. John, 208, 241, 244 
Morning Post, The, 219 
Mucklestone, Dr., Vice-Provost of 

Worcester, 302 
Mudford, Mr. W. H., 214, 232, 237 
Murray, Mr. Graham, 120 
Murray, Mr. John, 149 note 
Musurus Pasha, 146, 219 



N. 



Napoleon, Louis, 20 
National Review, The, 241 
Newman, Cardinal, 181, 303, 308 
Nineteenth Century, The, 291 
Norfolk, Duke of, and the Educa- 
tion Bill of 1902, 119 
Norreys, Miss Rose, 136 
Northcote, Sir Stafford (Lord Iddes- 
leigh), on Colonial Preference, 
gi ; his relations with the Fourth 
Party, 143 ; his retirement from 
the Foreign Office, 144 
Northern Whig, The, 188 
Northumberland, Duke of, 51 ; and 
the Education Bill of 1902, 119 



O. 

Ormsby, John, 196 — 201 

Oxford as the home of lost causes, 

308, 309 
Oxford Revival, The, 344-5 
Oxford Toryism, 299 — 312 



Pall Mall Gazette, The, 26, 220 
Palmerston, Lord, and the Reform 

Bill of 1858, 15, 20, 23, 121, 200 
Parliamentary reformers, Activity 

among, 130 
Parr, Dr., 201 
Pattison, Mark, 230, 310 
Peasant farmers, 291 
Peasantry, English, State of, before 

the death of George IL, 338 



INDEX. 



359 



Peel, Sir Robert, 151 

Pelham, Rev. Richard, 167, 168 

Pell, Albert, no, 117 

Pitt, William, 243 ; plans for relief 

of the poor, 33S 
Plumptre, Dr., Vice-Chancellor of 

Oxford, 305 
Political Register, The, 25 
Polybius quoted, 53 
Poor Law, The old and the new, 

337—340 
Pope, Alexander, 24 
Press, The, 2, 216 
Prothero, Mr. George, 242 
Prothero, Mr. Rowland, 241 
Public Worship Regulation Act of 

1874, 51 
Punch, 305 
Pusey, Dr., 305, 306, 307 



R. 

Raikes, Cecil, his opinion of Dis- 
raeli, 99 

Rambler Club, The, 193 — 210 

Read, Clare Sewell, 118 

"Redgauntlet," Disraeli's opinion 
of, 24 

Reeve, Mr. Henry, 269 

Reform Bill of 1867, The, 125 

Rhudd, Dr., 160, 161 

Riddell, Mrs., 247 

Ridley, Lady, 142, 144 

Roberts, Sir Owen, 202 

Rose, Sir Philip, 59 

Rosebery, Lord, 243 

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 208 

Routh, Dr., President of Magdalen, 

303 
Rowton, Lord, 47, 58, 59, 64, 67 ; 

letters from, to the author, 70, 

139, 229, 230 
Russell, Lord John, 17, 123 
Rutherford, Dr., headmaster of 

Westminster School, 249 
Rutland, The late Duke of, 71 ; his 

character, 81 
Rutland, Duchess of, 79, 147 



Sala, George A., 172 

St. Stephen's Club, 214 

Saintsbury Professor, 43, 213 

Salisbury, The late Dean of, 45 

Salisbury, Lord, 86 ; letters from, 
to the author, 87, 89 

Sarcasm, Disraeli's power of, 48 

Scott, Sir Walter, 24, 72, 244, 340, 
346; "Heart of Midlothian," 
240 ; influence of Waverley 
Novels, 307, 347 ; Journal of, 
quoted, 348-9 ; Mr. Balfour on, 
348 

Seeley, Sir John, 217 

Sewell, William, 301 

Shelburne, Lord, 12, 250, 251 

Sherbrooke, Lord, 40 

Short, Rev. Thomas, 303, 304 

Small Holdings, 89, 288 et seq., 296 

Smith, Alexander, 179 

Smith, Dr. William, 249 

Smith, Professor Goidwin, 52 

Smith, W. H., 129 

Sotheby, H. W., 202, 204 

Southey Robert, 264 

Spectator, The, 52 

Standard, The, 229, 230, 233, 235 

Stanhope, Lady, 145 

Stanley, Mr. Arthur, 266, 283 

Stanley of Alderley, The Dowager 
Lady, 271 

Stanley of Alderley, Lord, 261, 262, 
263 et seq. 

Stebbing, Mr. William, 236 

Steele, Dr., 190, 191 

St. Helier, Lady [see Jeune, Lady) 

Stockmar's Life of the Prince Con- 
sort, 52 

Stokes, Whitley, 195 

Strathnairn, Lord, 287 

Symonds, Dr., 304 



T. 

Talbot, Colonel, 279, 280 
Tennyson quoted, 57, 107 



360 



TORY MEMORIES. 



Terry, Miss Ellen, 136 

Terry, Miss Marion, 136 

Test and Corporation Acts, Repeal 

of, 155 
Thackeray, W. M., on great men, 

5, 24, u6, 145, 163 
Times, The, 235 
Tory agriculturists, 288 — 298 
Tory Arcadia, 149 — 170 
Tory Bohemia, 171 — 192 
Tory clubs, 193 — 215 
Tory Democracy, 254 — 260 
Tory inns, 313—318 
Tory journalism and literature, 

216—253 
Tory scholars, 201 
Tory sportsmen, 261 — 287 
Trevor, R. A., 203 — 207 
Trollope, Anthony, on journalism, i 
Tumbler Club, 193 
Turner, Sir Charles, 202 



V. 



Vaughan, Halford, Professor of 

Modern History, 309 
Vaughan, Mrs. Charles, 270 
Venetian Constitution, The, 8 
Village children, Strange customs 

of, 327 



Village life sixty years ago, 335 et 

seq. 
Virgil quoted, 17, 57, 83, 269, 316 
Voting, Odd reasons for, 95 



W. 

Walpole, Sir Robert, 10, 11 
"Waverley Novels," The, 307, 340, 

347, 350 
Webster, Sir Richard (Lord Alver- 

stone), 138, 139 
Whig scholars, 201 
Whigs' policy of proscription in 

1714, 10 
Whitty, Edward, 187; edits the 

Northern Whig, 188 
Wilberforce, Edward, editor of the 

Idler, I j^ 
William III., 7 
William IV., 150 
Wordsworth, Bishop of St. Andrews, 



Y. 

Yorkshire Post, Founding of the, 
226 



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